There Will Be No Palm Trees in Paradise

Karina Synytsia is a contemporary Ukrainian artist who works with painting, collage, and animation.

The artwork of Karina Synytsia is based on the reflection of human emotions, particularly loneliness and alienation. In her works, the artist recreates these states by placing them into constructed images made up of fragments of her own memories and the emptiness of semi-destroyed architectural phantoms.

The artist was born in Severodonetsk, Luhansk region, in 1999. She studied painting at the Department of Fine Arts at Kharkiv Art College (2015-2019). Later, in 2023, Synytsia graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture with a degree in monumental and easel painting.

Her works have been showcased in various group exhibitions and projects, including "Secondary Archive: Women Artists in War" (Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, 2024) and "The Feeling of Safety" (YermilovCentre, Kharkiv, 2024). She has also held solo exhibitions, such as "Impossible to Restore Cracks in the Dry Layer" (Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, 2024), among others.

Karina Synytsia's art is featured in the second edition of the Ukrainian section of the Secondary Archive and in archival initiatives like "The Sky Is Open. Voices From Ukraine" and "Ukraine in Flames" (by the Mala Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal).

She has participated in "Ukrainian Ecologies" Residency, organized by IZOLYATSIA and the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network (2024), as well as the Residency for Ukrainian Feminist Artists, hosted by the Martin Roth-Initiative (2024), among others.

Currently, Karina Synytsia lives and works in Kyiv. 

Karina Synytsia's art focuses on observing people and the space around them. As she told Secondary Archive, she explores the relationship between the universal and the individual, though the personal narrative plays a central role in her practice.

Among Synytsia’s original paintings are "Sky". "Closed Will Throw Off Its Curtain" Series (2024), "Park Avenue" (2024), "Troubles with Communication" (2022), and "The Kyiv Fortress" (2021). Other notable works include "There Will Be No Palm Trees in Paradise" (2022), "The Black Soil" (2021), "The Fun" (2021), "The Giraffe Wanders Gracefully" (2020), and many more. Karina Synytsia's paintings for sale are available on the UFDA website.  

Before the full-scale invasion, the artist was passionate about architecture and photography, which influenced her main focus in painting—the preservation of architectural heritage. In an interview with Tribun, she noted that after the invasion began, her paintings started to tell stories about social issues, but still through landscapes and urban spaces.

In her works, the artist depicts architectural structures, as well as landscapes, where she emphasizes the emptiness, hollowness and decay of these spaces. However, architectural elements in the works of the author appear as decorations of the urban space. Because the presentation of human feelings, emotional states and social aspects of life occupies a thematically and figuratively significant place in the center of her works.