Karina Synytsia

FORMS
OF
PRESENCE

Mystetskyi Arsenal, 2023
Kyiv, Ukraine.

Curatorial Group:
Oleksandr Soloviov,
Natasha Chychasova

This exhibition project is an attempt to bring together a year’s worth of observations and conversations about the experiences, feelings, and practices that Ukrainian artists have engaged in since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Within the exhibition space, each artist is present not only through their work but also through their personal story, allowing for a deeper understanding of the conditions that made these works possible.

Full curatorial text

In the first weeks of the full-scale Russian invasion, I could hardly think about painting, such things became meaningful against the background of horror. I stayed in Kyiv and watched all that hustle around me; thoughts of how useful I could be right at that moment overshadowed any desire to create.

At the beginning of March, I helped a group of my colleague artists evacuate their artworks to safer cities. After observing their reverent attitude to their artworks, I started to lose the sense of the artist’s meaninglessness.

So gradually I took up painting again as if holding a brush in my hands for the first time. The first attempts to depict something were failing, and as the material, I used whatever happened to be at hand-piles of small sheets of paper replaced the usual huge canvases.

After the tedious evacuation of artworks, working with large formats seemed pointless—everything had to be as mobile as possible. An A4 sheet or a light roll of kraft paper can be easily taken to a train at any moment. Since I had no studio, my small dorm room became a semi-working space. Little by little, I started painting on larger formats of thin craft paper and taped it above my bed, where there was a flat wall without any furniture. Gradually, images were found, and my painting became more and more active, at the same pace as before.

My artwork "Fast, Easy Memory Transfer" is precisely about the constant expectation of relocation. Preserving all the dimensions and colors, I copied a part of my room to take with me and remember in case of evacuation.

The "Curtain" appeared both as a talisman and a utilitarian thing for darkening windows. It is embroidered with various symbols of rebirth, idylls that appeared in my paintings during 2022 (a red flower, swans, fountains, and flower beds). The long process of embroidering had an unusual and still not peculiar to me therapeutic effect. Thus, the symbols that acquired an almost sacred meaning for me dictated the medium through which they were embodied.

Curatorial Work Descriptions
By Anastasia Garazd

"One Hour of Weakness" & "Fast, Easy Memory Transfer", 2022
acrylic on paper

"Curtain", 2022
embroidery on fabric

"One Hour of Weakness" & "Fast, Easy Memory Transfer", 2022
acrylic on paper

"One Hour of Weakness", 2022
acrylic on paper

Photo: Oleksandr Popenko

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Design & Layout: Denys-Kamyl Levadny