"The Paradox of a Wound That Never Heals": Polina Shcherbyna on Pain and Healing in Painting
Lesia Liubchenko
Interview conducted by Lesia Liubchenko, Content Lead of UFDA
Polina Shcherbyna’s painting grows out of the experience of the body — vulnerable and sensitive, yet strong in its truth. Her works explore the boundary between pain and acceptance, between what is destroyed and what can be restored. For her, the body is a carrier of memory, a space of faith and revival, where the intimate becomes universal.
In this conversation, Polina shares her reflections on her artistic path, the reformation of painting, and the search for meaning in a world living through loss.
Lesia: Polina, could you tell us how and when you decided to devote your life to art? What or who inspired you? Maybe your interest in it appeared back in childhood?
Polina: There were probably several factors that influenced this decision. One of them was my grandfather — he was a great admirer of sacred art, collected icons, various church artifacts, and books about art. The first thing that really shaped me was this environment filled with such objects. When I visited my grandparents, I would find ways to understand these items by constantly redrawing them. Basically, that’s how I started — by depicting the things around me.
So even as a child, I was sketching icons and making copies from books — mostly reproductions of Renaissance paintings, strange as that might sound. But for me, it was just a kind of play.
I was especially influenced by the first book through which I began studying the human body. Later, it became my reference and even a sort of lucky charm all the way until I entered the Academy [the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture]. It was “Anatomy” by Jenő Barcsay. It came to me from my great-grandmother Polina — I was named after her. She was actually a mathematician and had nothing to do with art. I made countless sketches from that book — muscles, bones, different body structures. I became fascinated by the human form quite early.
At home, we had one of those classic Soviet-era vanity mirrors — the kind with…
Lesia: Which had three sections…
Polina: Yes. And when I was about seven, I noticed that in one of the mirror panels, my face looked quite asymmetrical. That’s when I became fascinated with studying my reflection through this triple mirror — you could see your own face from the side, through the reflection of two mirrors. I became deeply curious about exploring that — both in myself and in the world around me. Over time, I began to sketch what I saw, exaggerating the differences in the proportions of my face and body.
I started thinking about the individuality of the human face, the surface of the skin, and the intricate network of muscles beneath it. I was interested in comparing and finding traces of the human body in the textures of nature — imagining skin as tree bark, loosened soil, the surface of stone, or a withered rose. These artistic explorations later took form in my early student works, “Absoluteness” and “Insurrection”.
Overall, when I look back on my path, there were some random things that probably turned out to be fateful. There are no artists in my family, but I’ve always felt drawn to studying art. So the decision to become an artist came quite early. Still, from time to time, I tried to push this profession away — even as a child, I already realized how hard it might be for me.
When I studied at the Children’s Academy of Arts [now the Art Liceum “Chemberji’s Kyiv Children’s Academy of Arts”], I fell in love with graphics — and only a little with painting at first. But not the kind of painting we were being taught. When I was ten, some of my favorite artists were Käthe Kollwitz, William Blake, Otto Dix, and Francis Bacon.
The level of sensitivity and emotional power in their works seemed unreachable to me. It felt like I could never achieve anything similar, because I didn’t yet have the understanding or experience of living through a difficult life, a personal tragedy, or historical upheaval — I hadn’t faced those decisive moments that force you to look into the abyss between the past and the future and wrestle with inner conflict, as many of my favorite artists did.
Even as a teenager, I thought that in Käthe Kollwitz’s self-portrait, you could see an overwhelming depth and pain that a contemporary artist cannot truly grasp. So for a while, I wasn’t particularly drawn to contemporary art — it was hard to imagine myself as part of it.
I guess art revealed itself to me gradually, together with my own life experience — running away from home at sixteen, the pain of a loved one’s unjust imprisonment, later the illnesses and deaths of people close to me, and then the war — this single, continuous illness that triggers other illnesses in people who were once perfectly healthy.
Lesia: I’d like to talk about your development as an artist and how the Academy influenced it. Some artists don’t believe in academic education — they feel they’ll evolve on their own, outside of that tradition. What about you? Did you have an inner desire to enter the Academy and study art in a structured, traditional way?
Polina: Actually, it’s quite a long story. When I was still studying at the Children’s Academy of Arts, at some point, art became exhausting for me. I decided to step away from it and turn to fashion design and deconstruction. But later, I realized that that system of education was exhausting, and that I truly needed painting. And so, at 18, I decided I wanted to return to the path I’d chosen earlier — even though my focus up to that point had been more graphic. I quit design school, spent a year and a half preparing, and finally entered the Academy I had dreamed of. That was a defining decision — one I’ve never once regretted.
Of course, over time, you start to realize how far apart the things you’re taught at the Academy — the knowledge, the motivations — are from the real world that an artist eventually faces. But I was sure I was on my path. I knew I just had to think about art, and everything else would follow. And honestly, that approach helps. I don’t think about commercialization, or about which galleries I should be friends with, or where I should go to build connections or visibility in the art scene. I don’t have a commercial plan that I’m gradually building. I focus, like an old master, purely on art. I spend a lot of time in my studio — reading, drawing, thinking — sometimes developing an idea for years before I even start working on it, and then monotonously and methodically bringing that image to life in material form.
It was the same during my studies at the Academy. I worked around the clock — sometimes I’d lock myself in the studio on Saturdays and Sundays just to have that uninterrupted time to work when no one could come in, since the Academy was usually closed on Sundays. Sometimes I made arrangements with the guards to let me stay, and other times I just stayed on my own, working fanatically on whatever fascinated me.
Sometimes those were assigned academic tasks, but by the second or third year, I was already creating more of my own pieces. I would occasionally take inspiration from academic assignments, but they were no longer just assignments. Back then, I thought those were already my own works — but now I see it was a transitional period, something between the Academy and the first steps toward my own artistic practice.
There were a lot of experiments — with levkas (gesso), carving, reliefs, enamel, tempera, and oil paint. Often these came together into mixed techniques, where the paint surface would start to flake over time, which, at one point, even became one of my recognizable stylistic features.
Lesia: It seems the Academy was not just a learning environment for you, but also a place where you explored the boundaries of your own freedom?
Polina: In Storozhenko’s studio, I sometimes felt constrained by the set visual framework — from the use of color to the composition on the canvas. That influence came directly from Mykola Storozhenko himself and his students. Still, the foundations of the studio were very strong. The visual language we were taught was based on the examples of artists like Albín Brunovský, Werner Tübke, and others.
But to me, the program seemed to gradually absorb the students’ individual vision — so at some point, I developed the opposite impulse: to push away from it completely, to lose any resemblance to the studio’s style.
Recently, I was talking with some colleagues and mentioned that I don’t really associate myself with my works from 2019. Back then, I was trying to break away from everything I’d done at the Academy and experiment freely — working with bright, sometimes pure colors, rough textures, and little attention to detail.
It was something I wanted to do to create a strong contrast with my academic works, where I had focused on delicate bodily forms, complex color palettes, carving, and refinement. I produced a series of rather expressive, fast pieces — but in the end, I realized that it wasn’t truly mine.
It was an interesting exercise — a way to understand more about my further direction in painting. I realized that my vision wasn’t shaped by the studio, but it was deeply influenced by it. During my studies, two teachers were especially important to me — Oleksandr Tsugorka and Nazar Bilyk. I still remember some of their advice to this day. Over time, I also came to understand how much I had absorbed from sacred art, which I studied quite deeply — though it had already been naturally woven into my perception and artistic language all along.
Lesia: It seems to me that this is the kind of path where you experiment — work in one style, then another, agree to things you might later regret, and eventually find your own way…
Polina: After the start of the full-scale invasion, I began working in monochrome painting. That was preceded by a gradual, consistent departure from color throughout my entire artistic practice — apart from one bright series of sketch-like works, some of which are on the UFDA website.
Lesia: Those are the earlier works from 2018–2019, right?
Polina: Not the early ones, but the old ones. They represent something in between my Academy period — when the attraction to monochrome was already quite strong — and what I do now. That very bright, expressive segment was purely experimental, lasting about a year, when I made paintings quickly, in a day or a few days.
At the beginning of my artistic journey, I could work simultaneously on several series with completely opposite goals I set for myself. Those were useful exercises, sometimes within the framework of vibrant, pulsating painting. Some techniques and materials fell away over time, while others have stayed with me — like linen canvas and monochrome.
This transition is mentioned by the art historian Kateryna Tsyhykalo in her commentary on my work “Is the Wound Healing or Growing?” on the UFDA website. Even back when I was still a student — and during the first couple of years after the Academy — my painting experiments often combined openly bright, almost sculptural layers of plaster and enamel with thin glazes of oil paint that created complex dark tones.
At times, these contrasts were accentuated by the extensive use of black, which often created a dense background for a bodily form levitating in the center of the composition — or, conversely, by unexpected cuts where the figure extends beyond the edge of the canvas. In these formal combinations, the dynamics of the body’s destruction and deformation acquire a sensual beauty. Another distinctive feature of my works has always been the intentionally unpainted areas of unprimed linen within the image, creating a glowing effect from the layers of gelatin on the canvas.
Already in 2016–2018, my works revealed a view of contemporaneity — a kind of destruction both in the visual code and its meanings, as well as in the technical methods themselves, where the image at times resembles a defaced fresco. The imagery in my painting back then already carried an existential-poetic aura and a political dimension in the depiction of the body, raising profound questions about humanity’s coexistence within darkness. Although my work wasn’t particularly visible at that time — since I rarely exhibited in Kyiv — those who visited my studio could see it and, in some way, draw inspiration from it.
Throughout my journey, the central theme — the one that connects all the meanings growing from it — has always been, and remains, corporeality and the body as a metaphor. Through it, I explore and reveal my perspective on the challenges of the contemporary world, drawing both on personal and collective experiences within the current context and through references to historical events.
In my recent artistic statements, the foundation lies in the cyclical nature of suffering throughout human history. I uncover the dark poetics of this continuous process of the body’s rebirth across different dimensions — both spiritual and physical — depicting corporeality amid the turbulence of political and social realities.
Lesia: You work with a variety of materials — fabric, wood — and in different techniques, such as burning, carving, and traditional painting. How do you choose which medium to work with for a particular series or idea?
Polina: I see my path as an exploration of painting. It is rather a reformation of painting through a return to its roots — when painting emerged from cave drawings, from frescoes and bas-reliefs on walls, from dome paintings, iconostases, altarpieces, or individual icons. For me, painting is both an object and architecture, a relief. That’s why no matter what material I choose, I consider myself working in painting — even if it’s carving or burning.
In charred wood, there can be more painting than in a colorful canvas painted in oil. And wood can burn in many different ways. It is through all these materials that explore painting that I bring it together through historical heritage.
I want to unify all the essential principles that I see in the forms and techniques of the past, giving impetus to a new form and understanding of monumental painting in contemporary art. If we talk about sacred painting, I actually go against tradition — although perhaps it could be called a sort of dialogue. For example, when I carve or create a relief surface, it tends to look more like something decayed and eaten by beetles than like a luxurious gold-leaf pattern commissioned by the church. It’s more about our time — how history and the perception of that history and its gaps transform.
Working with linen, I create an image reminiscent of a shroud, with partial loss of information — like an imprint. It’s a mark of time, left by human history itself. That’s the point where the divine becomes unbearably human. By human, I mean that whereas salvation once meant the rescue of the soul, today I see it as rescue from existential emptiness and cynicism.
By the way, as early as 2016, I was using the same materials I use now — namely, linen canvas. And the preference for monochrome and black, noticeable from the very beginning, has always been present, despite parallel experiments with other directions. Reflecting on my technique, I feel that over time, everything unnecessary has been stripped away, leaving only what was unquestionably mine from the start. It just took time to refine it.
Moreover, when I delve into memories of my childhood, linen fabric is also about my family, because my great-great-grandmother Akulina wove linen herself — towels, tablecloths, clothing for the whole family. Some of these items have survived to this day. And some of my works are painted precisely on those remnants of woven linen — from my great-great-grandmother. So in reality, there are many personal connections intertwined with my artistic practice.
Lesia: You’ve already touched on my next question: how do you see the boundaries of painting, given that your work sometimes extends into installation, objects, and even audio accompaniment? But I now understand that in your practice, this is broader: painting itself is the central idea that unites the creative process.
Polina: In my work, there are two important aspects. First, it’s the reformation of painting and the reconsideration of its roots. That’s what truly fascinates me in what I do. I don’t have grand ambitions to change painting as a whole — it’s more about my love for the medium and my personal choice of direction for its development within art.
Secondly, it is corporeality that is constantly transforming: at times decaying, at times sprouting anew.
Lesia: Why is it important for you to incorporate audio, melopoetry, into your work?
Polina: I’ve been writing poems and poetic texts for a long time, and often the audio recording comes first, followed by the text. It’s much easier for me that way. Many of these poems were created while I was in residence “Sorry No Rooms Available” by Petro Riaska. A lot of the poems I’ve written — and continue to write — I haven’t shown. Some have become part of my paintings that I’ve exhibited, while others exist as standalone works.
For example, at the Kebbel Villa Museum in Schwandorf, Germany, I created a monumental work that sits somewhere between a cross and a memorial. It combines burning, oil painting, cold encaustic, and a bas-relief on the top of the stele. In essence, it’s the largest work I’ve ever created — a culmination of my love for the medium.
I also included a sound installation in this work — something between prayer and singing. It’s not just a reading; it’s a complex, layered form. I hope that one day there will be an opportunity to record it and translate it from German into Ukrainian to show it in Ukraine. This piece is created through the context I am experiencing, the context my country is experiencing. Despite the difficulty of creating this work during such a challenging moment, it is one of the most important pieces I’ve made.
Sometimes this idea seemed absurd to me because of the effort and money it required, but creating this monument was a personal form of hope.
It was emotionally difficult to address painful themes throughout the narrative of the stele. Because creating art during war is supposedly not a priority — it doesn’t save lives like a doctor can. That’s why, emotionally, it seems difficult for an artist to get through this time, because they may not feel their art aligns with what is truly needed right now. For me, creating this piece was a way of resisting the urge to abandon everything. So the hardest part was finding a reason to keep working.
Lesia: In some publications, you’ve mentioned both “horror and helplessness in the face of humanity’s dark side” and “faith in the future”. How do you combine these emotions in your work? How do they coexist or balance each other?
Polina: I think they exist in constant struggle — both within me and in the political, social, and spiritual reality I witness and care about. That’s why they are reflected visually in my works. The corporeality I depict sometimes resembles a human figure, and sometimes becomes the body of humanity or the world. And it is often damaged. I have been referencing the image of stigmata since 2022, but its origins go back to my works from 2016, where the faces and bodies bore sores. It is something very earthly and anatomical, which I deliberately treated as sacred, creating a metaphysical aura.
In the works created after 2022, I focus more on the pain of loss and the experience of horror, which is trapped in a cycle that I compare to stigmata — a process that never fully heals. With each new tragedy, it seems as if the wound expands, yet we learn to live with it. At certain moments, it may even appear to heal, to adapt. This creates the paradox of the unhealed wound in my works: neither fully alive nor dead, rotting in some places, healing in others, sprouting something new and curative. This is reflected in the images I create — shoots, branches, trees growing — a form of healing through which I visually provoke reality to mirror what is depicted in my works.
At the same time, I compare this healing to an illusion: what has died cannot be resurrected. In this imagery, there emerges an allegory of Christ’s resurrection, revealing a conflict of events that cannot be reconciled. A conflict of time, where, during tragedy, no conclusion can be reached. Resistance against powerlessness in the face of humanity’s dark side and hope exists in a constant process, confronting one another. And one day, one prevails; another day, the other does.
It is important for me to address the cyclical nature of events throughout human history — the history of violence. I’ve found many insights in the works of Giorgio Agamben, who himself draws on Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and others. I’m interested in weaving together these sometimes different, sometimes mutually reinforcing ideas. They often resonate with my own thinking, so I use them as subtle references in my texts that accompany visual statements.
Overall, this encourages a deeper engagement with the experiences of people who have already analyzed or lived through something similar to what we are experiencing now. And I think it is very important to understand the experience of the Second World War. At that time, people felt that it would never end, that the future did not exist. Yet, despite this, some still glimpsed the future and waited for the moment when the horror ended. In other words, something that seemed endless eventually found its conclusion. This experience provides a greater understanding that we, too, will be able to see the future, become part of it, and reinterpret everything that is happening to us today.
Lesia: Since we’ve already started talking about the war, let me ask: how has it influenced your artistic language? How have the themes of the body and sacrifice transformed in your recent works?
Polina: It seems to me that they have transformed noticeably, yet naturally. Because the fundamental basis — corporeality — always remains. There is, at times, an illusory-realistic depiction, but it is never entirely realistic, since it is more about the image than about the object being depicted. It is a constant movement toward abstraction. I think that earlier, I was more influenced by the physiological aspect of this corporeality. For example, as a child, I would watch my ill great-grandmother. When she turned around to get candies for me from the cabinet, I could see the large wound peeking out from under the kerchief on her head.
On the eve of the war, my grandfather passed away. For several years, he had lived only lying down. His body changed every day — losing its color, its shape, and becoming covered with wounds and bedsores. For me, the premonition of war was already present in his body, which I never managed to depict. It was a difficult moral and ethical choice, because at that time, I couldn’t bear to face the vision of his death. I think that was a turning point that deeply affected me and later manifested itself in my painting.
Lesia: Thus, the premonition evolved into an artistic image, not just a personal pain.
Polina: Later, I stretched the largest canvases of my life in my studio on Nahirna Street. Each of them was four meters long. I rubbed my hands raw while pulling the dark linen over the stretchers. And at that very moment, I realized it was the last day — that tomorrow everything would change, and I wouldn’t have time to do anything more on them. Yet in that gesture, I tried to prolong that final quiet evening. It created an illusion of hope — that tomorrow, as always, I would come to my studio and continue working. It is that faith which is always present, which becomes the driving force. It seems that even if this faith may be somewhat illusory, at some point it might gain enough strength to transform horror into illusion as well.
I feel that pushing forward head-on is part of Ukrainian identity. And that seemingly senseless act of stretching the canvas was, at that time, an expression of hope and resistance. On this canvas, I wanted to depict the premonition of war when my grandfather was dying. It stands as a gap between what existed before the war — for example, the series of heads in “Half of the Half of the Personality” Series — and what I am creating now. I will return to this work and complete it sooner or later (the canvases on stretchers are still in Kyiv). There is an inner need to fill this gap, which has remained only as my own internal premonition.
Also, among the things that led to certain changes in my technical approach, I remember that the day before the full-scale invasion, my grandmother gave me small pieces of linen fabric from my great-great-grandmother Akulina in my studio. They were in terrible condition. I took them home to restore them, but by 5 a.m., the full-scale Russian invasion had begun. While packing an emergency bag that I was completely unprepared for, I realized the first-aid kit lacked bandages, which were already scarce at that moment. So I ironed these scraps of linen and placed them in sterile packets.
A few weeks of constant relocation later, I ended up in relatively safe Lviv. Unpacking my things, I found the linen pieces completely crumpled. This image stayed with me, and since then I have been working without stretchers — on crumpled linen with torn edges, reminiscent of those makeshift bandages. This evolved into a signature technique, where the folds and creases in the linen correspond to traces of time. By layering alone, they create subtle hints of an image. There is something about migration in this: canvas without a stretcher, an artist without a studio. Even the concept of home becomes, for a time, mobile.
Since then, until 2024, there hasn’t been a single work made on a stretcher, except for one: in Uzhhorod, during a fairly long stay at the “Sorry No Rooms Available” residency in 2022, I was sponsored to create a work on a frame. It remains the only one, and it can be seen on the UFDA website — “ONE LESS TREE IN PARADISE”. This work is about loss, about a torn fragment from a panorama of an endless cemetery, where trees are depicted instead of people or graves. It was created during a blackout, on the 13th floor of the Intourist-Zakarpattia hotel, using a headlamp. That makes this piece especially valuable: it is the only one on a stretcher and the only one created under conditions completely impossible for working.
Lesia: What else has changed for you in your artistic process and in your perception of the world after these experiences?
Polina: What else has changed? The drive to resist this darkness in humanity: how a person can reach their highest point of development — the Anthropocene — and yet fall so far that they cannot stop the tumor advancing toward them at a terrifying speed. In other words, the human world cannot sustain its own progress. It once again destroys all its achievements through war. In my works, I depict how this reflects on humanity, on nature, and on the body of the world itself.
There is one work from the “Open Sore” Series, which began in 2022 and on which I worked until 2024 (though I plan to complete the cycle with two more works currently in progress). In it, I depict the human body and the body of nature as forming a single whole. In the existing works, I created an allegory based on the story of Saint Thomas’s doubt, where he touches Christ’s side wound, trying to understand if it is real. I relate this to the contemporary world, where higher powers test humanity for its humanity, for authenticity: Is our pain real? Pain that requires constant proof.
As for Christ’s stigmata, I depict this wound mirrored on the left side, in the area of the heart. This allegory of a wounded heart relates to the political order, where the world requires constant proof and verification of the authenticity of the suffering of those in pain. At the same time, it reflects a doubt in humanity, perhaps even in humankind as a whole, where the question of what is humane evidently loses weight, demanding continual proof of inflicted pain. Specifically, I convey the sense of today’s body of the world, depicting in some works of this series features of the female body intertwined with a tree, forming a single whole. Overall, this paradox confronts existential questions about human existence alongside other humans, humanity within nature, nature without humans, the dying or degradation of the spiritual, and the emergence or search for a new form of hope.
In contrast, in my works from 2024, I find my own form of hope. Yet this gives rise to an inner conflict — binary sensations, the birth of new life against the backdrop of total death, the annihilation of all living things by Russia’s war in Ukraine, and beyond its borders. In other words, it is not only about the physical, but also about what dies between people — the walls that grow in society, provoked by the state of war, the distances in perspectives on the same things that destroy closeness. It is not only about the war itself, but also about its consequences: the breakdown of humanity in general, legalized aggression, and the search for enemies, which seems likely to continue indefinitely.
With the emergence of new life within me, I created an expression that combined these dual feelings toward the world, attempting to contrast Life both as a literal act and as a metaphor for the possibility of reviving what is fading. In the final month of my pregnancy, I opened the exhibition “From Each Wound in One Day a Flower Will Grow” (2024, Dim Gallery in Warsaw, curated by Ivanna Berchak). There, I presented the first work marking a gradual return to color. And the first color I chose was Red.
Lesia: In your opinion, what is the role of an artist in a society experiencing war, trauma, and loss?
Polina: On one hand, it is the role of a witness. I think a lot about artists who lived and worked during the Second World War, and now I view their works differently. On the other hand, as an artist, I want to look into places I cannot see, where I do not know, but can only feel. For me, it is very important in visual art to depict the invisible — that is, something I sometimes cannot fully explain in words, because it exists on a sensory level that manifests for me visually as an image.
Lesia: And is the process of creating art a form of therapy for you? Do you think your works can serve as therapy for viewers as well?
Polina: For me, art is something that heals. Sometimes I feel a certain sense of healing while working, a release from everything that is destructive. It seems to me that the work afterward retains this within itself, and perhaps the viewer can also feel this restoration, this illumination, this moment of catharsis.
Lesia: You mentioned Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher. Did you feel disillusioned by his stance after the full-scale invasion began? His essays on the war in Ukraine have sparked controversial reactions. Some critics accused him of relativism and of not sufficiently condemning Russia’s aggression. For instance, Nikita Kadan noted that he usually respects Agamben’s work but felt disappointed in this case.
Polina: I have been greatly influenced by Agamben’s works, and I respect and share the multilayered nature of his analysis. However, regarding his position at the start of the full-scale invasion, I think mere disappointment is clearly insufficient. His essays on the Russian-Ukrainian war, in a way, highlight a disregard for the reality of aggression. Agamben created a rather abstract philosophical analysis, overlooking the concrete fact of unprovoked Russian aggression and the imperialist nature of the war. To me, his stance represents a form of escapism that fails to distinguish between aggressor and victim. By questioning the narrative of Ukraine’s just defensive war, Agamben erases the moral distinctions between the actions of both sides. In effect, he plays into Russian propaganda. At the same time, for me, this does not diminish his earlier works, as they have become an established part of the broader philosophical legacy.
Lesia: Your recent exhibition at the Kebbel Villa Museum in Schwandorf was titled “The Highest Point of an Empty Temple”. Could you tell us how it began? What does this image — of an empty temple — mean to you?
Polina: The empty temple is a poeticized image of pain, moving from the personal to the collective, where emptiness metaphorically extends into the depth of a wound on the heart, raising existential questions about the future: ‘Is a person capable of finding a place for love where nothing remains?’ It is about the loss of humanity and the attempt to restore the capacity to feel. Yet this attempt to understand today’s abyss is impossible without looking into the past, because, in the context of history, today’s emptiness has been shaped over centuries.
The exhibition is structured into four episodes, gradually immersing the viewer into different dimensions of sacrifice. In the first room, the red one, the viewer finds themselves at the bottom of the wound — I create an atmosphere of post-apocalyptic calm. Next comes the fall of the cross as a premonition of another war, a letter sent from the past that will never reach its recipient.
In the following space — “Open Sore” — which reads as the altar part, shaped like a wall and a dome — the focus is on pain that requires constant proof, referencing the story of ‘Doubt of Thomas.’ The culmination occurs at the highest point of the Empty Temple: in the middle of the dark hall, a poem resonates as a sound installation, resembling the prayer ‘To Love to the Point of Blood."
In the center of the hall, flashes reminiscent of lightning illuminate a cross-shaped structure — Stele of Misericordia, the Monument of Mercy. This work contains many layers, reflecting on female strength and vulnerability, suffering and love, and the maternal: giving new life, witnessing it, protecting it, yet also suffering for it, even when the wound is not your own.
At the lower part, a mother’s hands hold her son; they are almost in shadow and barely noticeable at first glance. This speaks largely to our time — measuring pain, comparing female and male suffering — but also to something timeless, referencing the narrative of the Pietà (the Lamentation of Christ). On the young man’s chest, to the right, one can see an intercostal wound reminiscent of Christ’s.
I created this image with the understanding that it functions like a mirror, where the viewer sees the wound on the heart as if looking at themselves. It serves as a prompt for reflection, raising questions such as: how sensitive to the world’s pain is a person today? How much mercy do they have for another’s suffering? From this wound sprouts a branch with buds… It is a provocation of reality toward healing, which I have consistently depicted over recent years. A tender and almost naive gesture toward the harsh reality surrounding us. Within this, there exists a certain conflict between hope and despair, often coexisting equally and simultaneously.
I invite viewers to experience this exhibition as a walk through the voids of an open sore: first, you find yourself at the very bottom in the red room; then the flow carries you into the next space and the next, until you almost reach the outside, where, from a higher vantage point, it becomes possible to grasp the depth of this funnel. But it is not certain, because if darkness surrounds you, perhaps we are still inside. No matter what path is taken, the light has yet to indicate an exit.
Lesia: In this exhibition, you refer to historical events — from the siege of Kyiv in 1240 to the current war. Why, in your opinion, is it important to speak about the past right now?
Polina: o me, this return in time is an important step toward recognizing the finitude of every tragedy. It gives hope that today’s catastrophe will also inevitably come to an end. The next crucial moment is the return: the opportunity to reestablish historical priorities, to give a true voice to Ukrainian history, which has existed under constant pressure and oppression. The spread of distorted information and hostile propaganda had a powerful impact not only on Ukraine but on the world as a whole, where, in the political and cultural sphere, the history of the Ukrainian people was blurred and devalued. Now, however, counteraction must catch up, and the focus is precisely on the development of this reformation of the past. This process must continue, despite the absolute uncertainty of each next stage of the war’s unfolding.
When experiencing a catastrophe, it seems that only today exists for a person. But looking at the tragedies of the past allows us to realize that the present one will inevitably come to an end as well. It also creates space for the thought that art, through its power, records historical events, pushing them into the past. Perhaps, for me, it is also an attempt to travel forward in time and see today’s tragedy already as a trace of history.
Lesia: Which exhibition preparation has been the greatest challenge for you? You have exhibited in many countries: Germany, the United States, France, Poland, Ukraine, and others. What brought you the most anxiety, worry, or even technical challenges?
Polina: Each exhibition brings me many emotions, because even with the smallest resources — my own, those of the art space, or those of the curator who invited me — I try to realize the final idea that was proposed or discussed with me. It is very important for me to create an experience of the exhibition built precisely on the main message. I find this challenging each time, as I strive to overcome the budget, my own energy, the efforts of others, and to achieve the highest possible quality — to realize exactly the result that was envisioned, no matter what. Many people ultimately express deep gratitude for this, but the process can be difficult, because I never tire of pursuing the final goal.
Sometimes I have to perform the work of several people — both those who hang the pieces and those who set up the lighting — because a high-quality result is important to me. For example, at my most recent exhibition in Germany, there was a team of assistants, yet I still worked 24/7. I arrived well before the opening and had ten days for installation. I must say, though, that an additional ten days would have been useful.
I want there to be more space for art. Of course, one can always put a full stop at any stage, but within the artistic process itself, there needs to be more room for thought — whether it’s the formation of an idea, the creation of a work, or the installation of an exhibition. The more time there is to focus, and the less the expectation of a quick result, the more complete the expression can become: purer and more honest with oneself and with the spirit of the time.
Lesia: Could you tell us who collects your works? In which collections can they be seen today?
Polina: That’s a good question, because some people don’t want this to be made public. Some collectors own my works, but unfortunately, their private collections do not include public archives or opportunities to exhibit these pieces. I am now more cautious with private collectors because I understand that a work disappears forever when it ends up in the hands of a collector who does not share the physical artwork with potential exhibitions, curators, or institutions. In effect, the work dies in their collection. It no longer exists and may never be found. This is very regrettable.
Although I have earned my entire life solely through art, I have never pursued a commercial path and have never created anything for sale. The size, materials, and weight of my works are largely incompatible with the commercial route. I’m not just speaking about canvas works, although even those, with their torn edges, are not commercially successful. Yet those who understand the value in an artist’s expression, mindset, and signature style continue to support me, occasionally selecting pieces for their collections.
For example, some of my works are in a Parisian collection. Recently, I participated in the Bourse Habib Sharifi Scholarship (a well-known Parisian scholarship for emigrant artists across different fields, including film, music, and visual arts), where I became a laureate. As part of this program, my works were exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts Foundation. This foundation, established in 1816, is more focused on salon art, such as Rodin and Manet. My works, however, appeared quite aggressive next to the salon art, yet the contrast intrigued them. After the exhibition, they selected my work for their collection. Thus, this is one of the museum collections where I ‘coexist’ alongside works by internationally recognized artists.
My work “If a Dream Doesn’t Fly to Us, Can We Sail Toward It?” became part of the collection of the BIRUCHIY 021 Сontemporary Art Project after my residency in Prymorsk and the invitation to participate in the exhibition “Time Not Lost”, curated by Kostyantyn Doroshenko. The exhibition was shown in Zaporizhzhia at the Tourist Information Center.
Overall, most of my collectors are private, both foreign and Ukrainian. Some works were also purchased in New York, by galleries and individuals, but these are not institutional or museum collections.
Lesia: Do you have any creative rituals? What inspires you while working — perhaps literature, cinema, or music?
Polina: Sometimes it can be music (I like certain periods of the sound artist Alva Noto), sometimes audiobooks, and more rarely — podcasts. Monotonous speech in the background also creates a meditative feeling. But I also like working in silence, though that’s no longer possible now. It just must not be someone else’s conversations that I can hear. My studio is currently in my apartment, in a separate room, and focusing on work while everyone is home can be difficult. Still, listening to philosophical lectures in the background really sets the working vibe.
Lesia: I’d like to talk a bit about art in the context of modern technologies. How do you see its role in a world dominated by speed, instant information, and digitization?
Polina: It’s hard to say that I am very knowledgeable about this, but I am very pleased to be involved in the UFDA project. Firstly, in the context of war, it is an incredible step toward a digital museum, which the platform seems to aim for eventually. Secondly, beyond the war, it is an important step for research. It is also a colossal library, containing not only artists’ works, digitized down to the smallest detail, but also extensive information about the artists themselves, which is constantly updated — similar to the interview we are doing now. All of this exists on a single platform, allowing for comparison, research, and analysis. To me, this is not just a major step toward local study within the country, but also an opportunity to delve into global art.
Lesia: In your opinion, are digital counterparts primarily a means of archiving, preservation, and research, as you emphasized, or can they be considered valuable works of art in their own right?
Polina: I believe they can be valuable works of art. For example, several of my pieces were stolen during the war. Unfortunately, one of them wasn’t documented in time — no photographs were taken, which could have helped preserve it digitally. This work is called “The Fragility of the World in the Body of Unknown”, and it coexists with an audio poem. I exhibited this piece in the duo exhibition “BREACH” together with Svitlana Ahranovska at the M17 Contemporary Art Center, but only as a projection on the wall. I took a photograph with a regular digital camera.
And I see a future for NFTs where digital copies can exist not only online but also offline, that is, in physical exhibitions. This is not just about purely digital art shows. In fact, the potential to work with it is vast and diverse, depending on the opportunities and effort invested in exploring and choosing the form and direction to develop. By the way, the possibility of 3D viewing would also be valuable. As an artist, I would find it interesting to examine a work from multiple angles to gain an understanding of the object as a whole
Lesia: Such an option could be useful for your double-sided works.
Polina: I started creating them in 2018. I wanted to make paintings that don’t touch the wall but interact with the space from within. Some of these works were installed on stands, while others were suspended from cables attached to the ceiling, creating the impression that they were levitating in the space.
The first double-sided work was exhibited in New York and remained there, while the second one I displayed suspended in the air in my studio at the Institute of Automation in Kyiv. Both sides of this double-sided piece are on the UFDA website, but unfortunately, it’s impossible to understand that they are one work because they are presented as two separate NFT images.
This project is called “Therapy of Your Own Fears”, a cycle of double-sided canvases featuring a figure looking back. The figure on the canvas is life-sized, its body surface deformed and damaged, as if the skin is sliding off, exposing fears. It is a metaphor in which the main focus is the exploration of the phenomenon of fear: by looking back, the figure gazes at the viewer. On one hand, the viewer can be either ahead or behind, becoming the one the figure looks back at. And when only one side of the work is seen, it is impossible to fully grasp the concept of this state. In the NFT format, this work becomes something different — it is no longer the same physical piece. A more functional NFT would be a step toward an expanded way of experiencing it.
Lesia: You currently live in Germany. How does this affect your art and self-identity?
Polina: I live in Leipzig, but I periodically visit Kyiv to see my family and friends and participate in exhibitions. For instance, in August-October of this year, my solo exhibition took place at the Stedley Art Foundation. Emotionally, it’s hard to be far from home: existing between contexts and calling another place “home” is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. I remember how frightening it was to go on my first residency during the war — it felt as if my presence was protecting my home, and I couldn’t leave Ukraine. Emotionally, it was very difficult to allow myself to go.
However, speaking about how emigration influences my artistic practice, it can be said that it creates a certain distance from the tragedy (as harsh as that may sound) and allows my artistic expression not to be purely reactive. I can give myself time to focus and reflect on whether I truly want to express something, or if it’s just an impulse as a human being. Part of me, as an artist, simply wants to capture that impulse. For example, some works created in Ukraine during the first year of the full-scale invasion were more reactive, such as “Inhuman Feeds a Slave” or “Prickly Tear”. I don’t think being reactive diminishes them; there is value in it.
“For me, this created a contrast: to gain distance and see not only grief, pain, and war, but also the social and artistic context. To compare them, reflect on how Ukrainian art can integrate into the broader global context, or exist in the vacuum of its own community, or be censored depending on where it is viewed, and to analyze these processes. It is a significant impetus for development: to be in a position where I can view everything not only from the inside but also from the outside.
In general, I never had the desire to emigrate. I never planned to live abroad. Until 2020, I often traveled to the United States and had the opportunity to move there, but at the last moment, I declined, because I did not want to trade Kyiv for anything. Although I had contracts offered in New York with a gallery and curators who were ready to work with me, the condition was that I relocate. I decided, however, that I wanted to live only at home. My decision to stay abroad now was more rational, due to projects that had been discussed before the full-scale invasion and which developed while I was already abroad. In fact, I arrived for one residency in 2023 and then moved on to another. There were several projects that made it impossible to return home, because it was physically impossible to fit everything in at the time. This was my only way to earn a living, and I could not afford to stop.
At some point, it became clear that I would stay here, because it was my only way to continue practicing art. At home, I didn’t know how to find the strength or the means to keep working without financial support. Many things came to a halt, as collectors in Ukraine temporarily stopped buying. For an artist, this is a very vulnerable moment and a major challenge: either you look for an additional or even completely different profession, perhaps one that feels more needed during wartime than artistic work, or you search for ways to continue doing what you truly want to do and find reasons to keep doing it
Lesia: What helps you avoid burnout, keep working, and create today? What are your sources of hope regarding the future, life, and art?
Polina: What helps me is immersing myself in the experiences of philosophers, writers, and poets. Recently, I have been drawn to the work of Paul Celan and Lesia Ukrainka: despite all their pessimism, there is something in their vision that resonates with my understanding of the present. Also, people themselves — their resilience and desire to live despite overwhelming obstacles — are a source of inspiration. For example, my ill mother is a strong impetus for me. I dream that she will be able to witness a peaceful future and live in times when her life is not threatened by war. And my son is the embodiment of that future. As a mother, I naturally do not want to believe that there is no future, because here it is — the future exists in him. I want him to experience easier times. In general, the people I support and who support me are a driving force, despite the distance — sometimes a very great distance — between us.
Painting is my inexhaustible source of hope. For me, it is like a time machine: I can slow down through the artistic process while working on a piece, or I can accelerate and seemingly push my expression into the past. This allows me to see the work as part of history, something that has already occurred, something that has ended — including the horrors of our time.