Statement

My practice is primarily textile- and map-based. I explore landscape and territory as spaces shaped by memory, loss, violence and belonging. My main focus lies on how places are transformed, erased or, in a contrary, how they resist and fight.

My interest in maps is closely connected to the own experience of war and displacement. Since Russia's full-scale invasion and my evacuation abroad, I have lost access to the landscapes of my home Kharkiv region. Maps give me back some of this access (or at least an illusion of it) as they provide precise documentation of the landscapes. Even when the actual place is long gone or radically transformed, a map can still keep its memory alive.

At the same time, maps claim to represent a landscape in a purely scientific, objective way. As an instrument of power and control, they clear a territory of any personal meanings and truths associated with it. Reducing landscapes to constellations of abstract lines, maps reflect neither the tragedies they are going through, nor their resistance and will to survive.

Using hand-embroidery on the inherited household textiles, I turn the map lines into material traces. Thus I move them from the realm of apparent objectivity and neutrality to the one of tactility and bodiliness, physical and emotional intimacy. This way I am not only processing my own grief and reflect on my memories, but also try to find answers to the questions: How do we document the disappearing? And how