2025 Finalists

I’m a visual artist from Ukraine. I was born in 1996 in Ukraine, Dnipro, and am now working and living in Kyiv, where I received a master’s degree at the Academy of Arts. In my childhood, I was surrounded by factories, the railway, the unfinished subway and other industrial objects, which I tried to find and depict in Kyiv. Before the war started, my project in progress was a series of Kyiv subways, which was huge for me after stations in Dnipro. For now I continue this series, giving it a different meaning. For now it’s a place where people can find shelter, a safe zone from rockets and explosions; very often we could see how people live right on the floor of a subway station or spend at least every night there. Since the first day of the war I also spent a lot of time on the floor. Underground places are ideal for this, some stations are very deep. When I enter subways I think about the underworld, ground, death.

I’m showing how this experience changed my themes in art. Before the war, I painted the subway as a mysterious place, a means of transport for people in big cities and urban locations of the criminal world. For example, tunnels, they lead somewhere, with many intersections and technical zones, thinking about what they are made for. However, they all have a certain reason for their existence, their function, their purpose. The viewer stands in the center, not yet deciding which path to choose. Each of the paths leads to a new perspective, a depth of space that we do not see in advance. It is very difficult to know which path will be more or less successful, the same, or to stay in place at all. In many places, space and form are deformed. Sometimes there is only one corridor, with light at the end of this tunnel, or vice versa, with darkness. Our reality now only pushes us to think more about the underworld and the continuation of existence underground. These thoughts are difficult to ignore. These are thoughts in parallel about both death and the end, and about life, but in a different reality and conditions. A person tries to adapt to new challenges and new choices in this perspective, the conditions for which are constantly changing.

It is very important for Ukrainians to continue working, to find motivation and energy for life, this life continues even underground, in the subway and bomb shelters. For me, it is very important to show this personal experience in my works, not to ignore it, but to transform, to explore the emotions that I feel every day. I plan to continue the series with shelters and a more gloomy series about the path (corridor).

(19/25)