Rain fills in with water the holes that explosions left in the ground; by turning them into the lakes, it aligns the horizon line

Tablets of Hope

Embroidery on used home textile, 2024

The embroidery with white threads on white cloth has been a very traditional technique for the region of my origin – Slobozhanshchyna. But it is a completely new technique for me. Anyway I chose it consciously, because of its subtlety and kind of «quietness» – it really requires some effort it’s certain light environment to see those almost invisible stitches. At the exhibition vernissage I was told that they also look like the scars from the stitches wounds - not the fresh ones, but those that lingered years and years ago. This new series of artworks, which will all consist of my poems embroidered with white threads on old white bed linen I found at my grandma’s village house in Kharkiv region, will entirely be about that – about hopes that all the wounds, even the most painful and terrible ones, will eventually be healed and someday only the small almost invisible scars will remind of them. Like the lakes that once have been holes in the ground from rocket strikes and mine explosions.

The hope for the better future, the wish, is actually a very fragile thing. As a kid (and still actually) I believed that you shouldn’t express your wish aloud, only god can hear it, otherwise it won’t come true. That’s also why I «wrote» it with white thread on the white cloth, the words of hope don’t need to scream, unlike the words of anger, whisper is their proper form.

Blood is coagulating, the wounds are being closed

They are all named – heroes, heroines, victims, and murderers.