November 29th – December 28th, 2025
Artist Statement
This collection is dedicated to my grandmother and is my attempt to regain my balance. The world is shifting, and my reality is shifting with it. Living in a lucid world of my dreams where everything is possible, where butterflies are giant and moths tell stories – it’s easy to loose your footing, dive too deep, run out of breath and desire to go back to the real world, rewind your life, live backwards to that sapphire in your heart when you’re just a little girl, barefoot, chasing butterflies in grandma’s garden. Childhood nostalgia, precious memories, endless summer days, no routine, no agenda, the sense of absolute power of decision making – about how to spend time, what to do, where to go and when to come back – when everything is possible in a same way of how a bird chooses its path in a sky or a bee chooses a flower. I loved my grandma and my grandma was love. She was very religious, and she was full of secrets. Secrets walked with her, stuck in a deep pockets of her apron I never saw her not wearing, mixed with beetroot seeds, pieces of garden twine, and occasional chicken egg. Secrets were braided into her hair. She hid them under her shawl, but every night before bed she would get on her knees to pray before solemn eyes of gilded icons looking down on her from lime washed walls and her thick hair braid would escape the shawl and curl on a wooden floor beside her, spilling secrets on wooden planks, and that is how I will always remember her.
I was born and spent my young years in Ukraine. I learned my skill from my mother, just like she learned from hers. My fascination with old tapestries goes way back and rooted in my childhood memories of grandmas house in thriving and busy Ukrainian settlement Pokrovs’ke where stucco walls were hung with religious icons, darkened paintings, and tapestry wall hangings. It almost felt like leaving the wall naked was a sin, and a naked floor was another one. We usually would get to grandmas late at night and I’d be asleep after long car ride and in the morning I open my eyes to a riot of images dancing across the walls, overlooked by solemn saints in their gilded frames, with dried bunches of fragrant flowers tucked behind them. Childhood memories, a fairytale, a dreamer’s dream. Sometimes if you’re just lucky enough, you get to take them with you through your lifetime.
