Alter Pieces
Oil on linen with beeswax and found wooden frames
Series of 6
2021
First revealed in solo exhibition POUR THE FEAR: Solastalgic Synchronicities at Lunchtime Gallery, Glasgow (Scotland). This body of paintings were also included in three-person exhibition The Grass at Our Feet at VITRINE Gallery, Basel (Switzerland), published in the 26th edition of Art Maze Mag, New York (USA) and featured in KUBA Paris, Bonn (Germany).
Supported by Creative Scotland and the Shevchenko Foundation
Documentation by Lillian Ross-Millard
Can't Catch Lost Time or the Thinning Earth
In the cyrillist spirit, these Alter Pieces eternally recur as they draw upon natural imagery, portals, dreams and notions of ascension. Rather than portraying idols found in domestic sacred corners, they carry motifs that are embedded within folkloric agrarian practises and rituals; the language of my ancestors, translated through syncretic survival. Their ideas and beliefs have been oppressed and re-iterated in the manifestos of orthodox icon painters such as Pavel Florensky, by the Soviet Cosmists, by the surrealist movement. My anachronistic icons seek remedy to Solastalgia, a contemporary neologism used to describe the decline of the earth’s ecosystems. I create space to meditate on slower paces. Strakh vylyvaty or pouring forth the fear, is a Ukrainian folkloric healing technique used to reduce anxieties, especially those related to land. The curdled beeswax objectifies the fear.
The land gives everything and takes everything away
A ring around the sun and the blizzard rages on
Like sour oranges for breakfast
Circles around the onion dome
