Untitled

Vasyl (Tkachenko) Lyakh is an artist working in cinema, painting, photography, and music.

Vasia Lyakh's art explores themes of memory, coexistence, and the transmission of experiences across various social groups, gender identities, species, regions, and cultures.

The artist was born in 1995 in Mariupol, Ukraine. In August 2019, he became a member of the NGO Freefilmerz and participated in the Creative East-2 Project.

Vasia Lyakh has directed the films Metarobota 25 (2019), Treasure 90 (2020), and Haraltida—In the Yard (2023). He also worked on several music projects, including Serviz Propav, Arborglyphs of Mariupol, and Khayt among others.

Exhibitions, featuring Vasia Lyakh's paintings and other works, include "How Are You?" at the National Center Ukrainian House in Kyiv (2023), "near/far" at Promocyjna Gallery in Warsaw (2023), "Common Ground" at Villa Mautner-Jaeger in Vienna (2023), among others.

Currently, the artist lives between Kyiv and Lviv. His works are held in museums in Kyiv and Warsaw. 

The artist works with paints, video, film (16 mm and 8 mm), and music, using these mediums to explore themes of memory and identity in his work. Vasia Lyakh's original paintings include "Untitled" (2022), "13.04.2022" (2022), and "12.09.2022" (2022), among others. In his works, he uses oil and pastel on canvas and paper. Vasia Lyakh's paintings for sale are available at auction on the UFDA website. 

Before the full-scale invasion, Vasia was not deeply immersed in artistic practice. However, the invasion transformed his relationship with canvas and paint. To cope with the uncertainty of what had happened to his family and to endure the pain of losing his hometown, he began painting intensively. His canvases predominantly depict, at first glance, ordinary scenes from everyday life, yet they are imbued with profound emotions and the tectonic shifts in society brought about by the war.

All of the artist's works draw from his memories of the war, shaped by conversations with friends and family or impressions formed from watching the news. His large-format paintings often take the form of self-portraits, serving as an attempt to portray the war through both personal and mediated experiences. By independently reconstructing scenes from real life using descriptions and documentation, he transforms himself into a witness to the events of the war.