My Home is a Dream

Hand embroidery on textile, 2026

This embroidery on a semi-transparent curtain shows the map of my home city - Kharkiv, Ukraine. In 2022, due to the russian full scale invasion in my country, I had to leave my home and became a refugee. Since then, I visited Kharkiv several times, so it is not like I’ve lost it forever. But I do feel like losing it, as the real city less and less corresponds to the image of it that I keep in my memory. Each year of my life far away from it, this image gets more vague and ghostly. In Ukrainian language there are two different words for the dream you have while you sleep - “son“ - and for the aspiration, ambition, or fantasy - “mriia“. I am not sure what my home city has become for me. Is it a dream that I strive to achieve one day? Or is it a dream that will disappear with the sounds of an alarm clock? I decided to title this artwork in English - so that I don’t have to choose between two “dreams“, so that I postpone this moment in time when I’d need either to go back to my home city, or admit losing it once and for all.