15-23 February 2022, from left to the right:

«I do not give up and do not lose hope»

«Full bag of anxiety»

«We will fight»

«Olia Fedorova, 28 y.o. Essay. My family. My family is very big. I have my mother, my father, my two grandmas and two grandpas, and also 40 millions of brothers and sisters»

22 February 2022

March 2022

«…Months before the invasion I was feeling so helpless, so weak. Long period of a constant anxiety, of uncertainty about the future, feeling the heavy breath of the menace everywhere – the things that, I suppose, every Ukrainian had been experiencing since November – made me dive almost to the bottom of despair and loneliness. I started writing “motivational” affirmative postcards, as an act of self-help, to cheer myself up a bit. This postcard was among them – now I’m holding it in front of the wall in our bunker in Kharkiv. I wrote on it that I have power – though I wasn’t feeling like having it in reality. But now I do feel it. I know that I’m not alone now. And those are not only all my Ukrainian brothers and sisters whom I feel every moment standing by my side, but also the people from all over the world. These days we have shown that we are more powerful than the “second greatest army on Earth”, the army of a giant totalitarian wannabe-empire, more powerful than all these international institutions and organizations who are too afraid to take a next step without hours and hours of discussion. We are the people, and we have power. I just wanted to thank you for giving me back this feeling that I have power too – and I know now that this power is invincible…»

«Always remember who you are»
July, 2022

«…This phrase comes from one of my war-time artworks. During these months I felt it very strongly how much important the identity is – on personal and global levels. It may change with time – it is natural for a person to change as they develop – it may be fluid, easily absorbing new things from the environment and turning them into a part of itself. But there’s always a core, a kernel, a firm skeleton on which the flesh of your personality grows. Something you can lean on, something you can always rely on, something that is always there with you. It can be easily lost behind of all those layers that you wear during your life. And especially it is easy to lose when someone else makes you wear what doesn’t belong to you – what THEY want you to wear, not you. And all those toxic things can make you forget your core – or you may not even know what your core was at all - make you lose the sense of who you are, or never let you find it.

That’s why I decided to have this affirmation always with me. So that it reminds me about how hard it was for me to find my core and get rid of all the stuff that I wore but that was alien for me. So that I always remember who I am. Wherever I am. Whenever I am. And never let anyone to take it from me again…»

«Step 1 – Get out. Step 2 – Fuck off»
December, 2022

«…We have only one suggestion to end the war for Russia. Wrote it in their language, so that it’s easier for them to understand. Somewhere in between there are also reparations and tribunals, but the core points remain non-negotiable. And no air strikes with rockets or drones, no millions of mobilised cannon fodder, no nuclear threats are able to make us move away from this.…»

«I believe, I believe, I believe»
Christmas, 2022

«…This card I made last winter, when we all froze in anticipation of a great disaster. But even then I did believe that we would go through it and prevail. Since then, me, my family, my friends and my whole nation have experienced the darkest times ever. Though my faith, my hope not just grew stronger – they have transformed into the confidence and determination. My family, my friends, my people, my Armed Forces, my government and people from all over the world transformed them. This Christmas is not the same as any previous one, and all the further Christmases will never be the same. But I believe that the symbolism of light, warmth and hope with which Christmas used to be associated, will from now on gain some new value and new senses…»

January and July, 2023

«…I was born in the Russian speaking family, in the Russian speaking city of Ukraine, in the region where the majority spoke Russian in their daily life too. Neither my family nor I ever thought about how come that we were Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and we didn’t care much actually, as we never experienced any problems because of this. No discrimination, no humiliation, no limitation in rights, nothing that Russia claims Ukraine has been doing to Russian-speaking people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Kharkiv or Odesa during all years of independence. And these were we, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, that Russia came to “rescue” – by killing and torturing us, by destroying our homes, by turning our fields and gardens into wastelands, by wiping out our cities. This is what they call “liberation”, Russian style. No surprise that this language became for us the language of terror, violence, cruelty, barbarism, death. It is also the language of dehumanizing propaganda, the language of endless lies, with the words of which they call to eliminate us. And when exploring deeper the history of my family, my city and my region – for me it also became a language of coercion, enslavement, colonization and memory erasure.

I hate every moment of being able to understand and speak russian as my native language, I hate it that most of the moments of my life were framed in words in russian. I hate that I used to say “I love you” to my dearest in russian. I hate that it makes me closer to this nation, to this country, to this culture, while I’d love to be as far from them as it’s even possible. I hate that this language makes me a target for them. Thus, I switched to Ukrainian fully and am now trying to get rid of everything connected to Russia in my life. Though it’s still so hard, especially when you live only 40 km away from the border with Russia, and like almost everyone here have many relatives on the other side of the border. Also, of course, you can’t get rid of what has become a part of your identity that easy. It’s a long way, but as it leads to freedom – it is for sure worth all the effort…»

«Акація (“akatsya” – acacia) – Бук (“buk” – beech) – Васильок (“vasylek” – cornflower) – Гвоздика (“gvozdika” – carnation) – Герань (“geran” – geranium) – Гіацинт (“giatsint” – hyacinth) – Піон (“pion” – peony) – Тополь (“topol” – poplar) – Тюльпан (“tulpan” – tulip)»
July, 2023

«…This seems like a list of plants. But for Ukrainians these words of Russian language (many of which sound similar in Ukrainian language as well) – the words that once used to be names of flowers and trees – gained a double meaning. Each of these words are also the names of different kinds of deadly Russian weapon: self-propelled guns, missile systems, gun-mortars, war drones, intercontinental ballistic rocket. The things that bring death and destruction to Ukraine and threat to the rest of the free world – named after pure and innocent, beautiful natural beings. Russia not only poisons our land with mines, our rivers with blood and dirt, our skies with smoke and missiles whistle. It poisons also our language, the way how we see and perceive the surrounding reality, polluted them with those double meanings. I often feel that it was their exact intention, their cruel idea – to come and spoil everything dear to us, all good and beauty, to make so that the things we used to love and admire become for us forever associated with the horrors of war. Just because they can do so, just out of an impotent malice. As if they have a decease, but instead of curing it, they strive to infect everyone – and everything – around them…»

«Earth policy»
(Scorched earth policy – Dried earth policy – Flooded earth policy – Mined earth policy – Tortured earth policy – Raped earth policy – Intimidated earth policy – Poisoned earth policy)
July, 2023

«…It seems that there is no more such suffering that Russia hasn’t yet brought to Ukrainian land – its earth, its waters, its air, its cities and villages, animals and plants, and, of course, people. Every time when you think it can’t be worse – remember, Russia is very creative in the ways of bringing devastation, destruction and death wherever they go. Today, Ukrainian soldiers are the only ones who are ready to risk their lives and put an end to this evil once and for all, not to let it apply their policy on the entire Earth…»

February 2024

«Зємлєделіє» – read as «zemliedieliye», from russian literally «earth making, earth work», meaning «agriculture». But also it is the name of the russian engineer system for distanced mining, which is capable of «planting» up to 600 land mines around the designated area at a distance from 5 to 15 km.

«…It is very typical for them, to name their deadliest weapons after something innocent, related to nature, something that should spread life, not take it away. They kind of laugh at a very idea of peace and calmness this way. As if they are saying “You like flowers? Here, take our ‘Heraniums’, ‘Peonies’ and ‘Tulips’, we’ve sent them directly to your house!”. «Oh, you want to develop agriculture on your land? We have our russian ‘Agriculture’ for you, we’ll work with your soil so that you won’t be able to step on it for years, we will ‘plant’ our ‘flowers’ in it, so that for a long long time nothing else will be able to grow on it!”.

That’s what they do, they spoil the words we used to name what we love, so that they change their meaning for us to something painful and terrifying. They spoil the very language we speak, the very way of how we perceive the world. This poison goes deep, and I feel we won’t be able to remove it from our bodies and souls soon…»

August, 2023

«…To stay in your home country when it’s in a full-scale war means that every next moment you may be killed. It is scary.

To leave your home country and go abroad, to the safer place, means facing drastic changes in your entire lifestyle, in everything you used to know, and complete uncertainty about your and your loved ones’ tomorrow. And this is also scary.

When you escaped to the safety, and have been living in a foreign environment for some time – eventually you may realize that as the war continues and there’s no sign it will end soon, you have to gradually accept the idea of never being able to come back home. That you have to start your live all over again, but at the same time with little to no chance to really assimilate, to feel yourself truly at home here. It is scary.

But also to leave the place where you can at least be sure that you or someone you love won’t lose their lives to a rocket attack – and return to your motherland at war, it means coming back to the constant risk, to doom to never being in safety, to always staying alerted. And yes, you may come back – but will you really fit in the environment you used to consider native? After all, both the environment and you have changed a lot during this time – and some of these changes may turn out to be fatal. What if you leave the place which you feel you don’t belong to, and come back to a place you perceived as home – only to find out that you no more belong there as well? That is also scary, indescribably scary.

And remember that there are people who simply don’t have choice, to stay or to leave, to leave or to stay. I’d love to say that it makes them fearless. But the truth is that they are scared too, scared as hell.

Sometimes to stay is the right thing. Sometimes to leave is the right thing. Sometimes both on them are right, sometimes none. But I think what is always right – is to accept your fear, and thus overcome it. It gives hope, it gives a chance – to break out from the dark and desperate place in-between, the limbo where there’s nothing left but fear…»

December, 2023

April, 2024

«…The artwork sketch I made yesterday on the shore of the Baltic Sea, based on my real experience in Tallinn. Two times I was approached with a question in russian, first time I managed to answer “Sorry, I don’t speak russian”, and was very proud of myself. Second time I automatically replied in russian, and immediately felt a huge shame. Unfortunately, this language is still with me, and it’s not that simple to get rid of it. Nothing wrong about being bilingual – but when one of those two languages is the language of occupants, it feels like being a child of a regular woman and a serial killer (at least as I imagine I would feel). The fact that you share genes with him doesn’t mean that you’re going to become a serial killer too – but knowing that makes you anxious and always double-checking yourself, aren’t you turning into something evil.

But still there is a choice, and I make this choice every time. In the situations when I can’t speak Ukrainian but there is a russian language option given, I always try to pick any other language that I know, just to avoid speaking, reading, writing in russian, even if it causes difficulties. Still I often fail, following the easier, usual paths. Nevertheless, I believe that the efforts I put in it, successful or unsuccessful ones, all help me distance myself further and further from the language, culture, context of the country that brought war to my homeland. It is not a “hype”, not “fashion”, and not something I’m being pressured into doing. It is my conscious decision and my everyday choice, a constant work on myself…»