I love you when you are scared

I love you when

Embroidery on wearable textiles, 2024

«…After I began working with the embroidery it was logical to turn to what is Ukrainian Vyshyvanka usually associated with – embroidered shirts and blouses. My ancestors from Slobozhanshchyna region used to stitch the ornaments with white thread on white cloth. But also it was common overall in Ukraine to add on a sleeve or on a collar a few small almost invisible stitches with the name of the shirt’s owner, a short word of prayer, or a simple symbol – a talisman protecting from an evil eye.

A white linen shirt always was the closest material to the skin, and thus considered sacred. You wear a white cloth next second after birth, and wearing it you go to the grave. Embroidering the words on the sleeves of this white shirt felt especially intimate for me, like visualizing a whisper, or an inner voice that only I can hear.

I wanted to write the words that I have always wanted to hear from this inner voice. Being our own harshest critics, we tell them to ourself so rarely. The words of self-compassion and self-love – not only in our best moments, but most importantly in our darkest, lowest times, when we feel not worthy of any compassion and any love at all.

Recently when the summer began and people started wearing short-sleeve shirts, I noticed on the open arms of many of them the old scars from past self-harming actions. Those are marks of their very own darkest times, which they survived, which they went through and thus became stronger. My stitched words, I’ve been told, also remind of some old scars. So I thought what if those scars of past traumatic experiences that stay with you for your entire life could at least provide you with words of self-compassion and self-love – something you lacked back then when the wounds were fresh.»

I love you when you are confused