About the artist

I am a Ukrainian artist, born in Donetsk, raised in Kyiv, and now based in London. I have been drawing for as long as I can remember, but in 2022, when russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, I started making art almost every single day. I was far from home and drawing became the only place where I could process my feelings. And it still is.

I work with acrylic paints, markers and oil pastels. My works tend to be vibrant, even cheerful at first glance. But on closer look, they often carry something more uneasy and unresolved. This disparity and tension is the point.

I am drawn to people above everything else - not how they look, but what they carry. I am interested in intimate moments that words cannot describe: waiting, longing, feeling isolated and numb… So I translate them through the body and through symbols.

I draw from my memories, from moments I am afraid of losing, from feelings that have nowhere else to go.

I do not make art to resolve anything. I make it to expose something raw, and to ask the viewer whether they recognise it in themselves.

Yuliia