As If a Rose Went Under the Skin and Reached the Heart. Diptych

2025, Lindenwood, Wood carving, Encaustic, Ash pigments, Wood burning , Contemporary

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The work "As If a Rose Went Under the Skin and Reached the Heart. Diptych" is part of the project "Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Past," which was exhibited at the Stedley Art Foundation in Kyiv (August–October 2025).

"A rose entwined with the heart — its thorns pierce the flesh, petal by petal, merging with the skin. The transformation leaves voids behind, and it remains unclear whether the past is trying to consume the future, or the future is absorbing the past."

"A tangible movement unfolds, as if delicate petals turn inside out, fusing and becoming part of human skin. This is a wound that rushes toward us, coming so close that we see its core — strikingly similar to a rose. In this image, the conflict lies in the duality of time: I remember carrying new life within me amid unfolding catastrophes, when empathy for another became a phantom pain in my own body, opening petal by petal with every new tragedy."

The image of the wound-rose alludes to the stigmata — a recurring motif central to Polina’s artistic practice — migrating from one expression to another. It embodies the experience of living through difficult times, to which the body itself responds.

"At times it seems that you are adapting, that the wound begins to heal, yet soon reality reminds you of itself — with a new surge of grief, you again feel the ache within your body."

This work is a sketch for a large canvas from Polina’s ongoing cycle exploring the image of the wound-rose. For several years, she has examined this symbol through the writings of various authors and philosophers — from Paul Celan’s No One’s Rose to Lesia Ukrainka’s The Last Flowers, among others.

"For me, the rose in Celan’s poetry, as in Lesia Ukrainka’s work, fuses pain and the fragility of beauty within the fabric of life, alongside the inevitability of death. Yet in Celan, this image gains a deeper, more tragic existential resonance — one that reflects both personal and collective catastrophe, speaking at once of the past and of the future that has already become our present," Polina said.

Digital original details

Format
Digital Original Standard
Resolution
400 MPX
Color depth
48 bit 281 Trillion Colors
Original file size
1539 MB DNG File

Country
Ukraine
Year
2025
- Styles
  - Contemporary
- Medium
Physical canvas
20cm x 30cm
Framing
No framed

Polina Shcherbyna

Born 1993,

Germany

Polina Shcherbyna is a Ukrainian artist whose primary medium is painting. Whether through monochrome images on linen canvas or pyrography and carving on wood, her practice always connects back to painting and its foundational principles. The central theme of Polina Shcherbyna's art, serving as the core from which other subthemes branch out, is corporeality.

Summary of Polina Shcherbyna

The artist engages with the expanded concept and perception of painting, presenting it as an object that reflects on iconography and the aesthetics of the temple. The artwork of Polina Shcherbyna is interpreted by the artist as a double view of the world of the fall of the Anthropocene idea.

Biography of Polina Shcherbyna

The artist was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1993. She studied in department of monumental painting and temple culture named after Mykola Storozhenko at NAFAA, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Polina Shcherbyna's paintings have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her solo shows have been held at Gallery DIM in Warsaw, M17 Contemporary Art Centre in Kyiv, Idealfruhstuck in Paris, and Šopa Gallery in Kosice, among other renowned venues. Moreover, she participated in group shows, such as "Materia metters" at Ukrainskyi Dim in Kyiv (2024), "Traces of timelessness" at Künstlerhaus Sootböern in Hamburg, "BRÜCHE" at HAUS KUNST MITTE in Berlin (2024), and many more.

This year, Polina opened her solo exhibition "The Highest Point of an Empty Temple" at the Kebbel Villa in Schwandorf, Germany.

Currently, the artist lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin.

Polina Shcherbyna's Famous Works: Exploring the Artist's Journey

Polina Shcherbyna's original paintings include "Is the Wound Healing or Growing?" (2023), "ONE LESS TREE IN PARADISE" (2022-2023), "The Winter Landscape Has Changed To — The Landscape Of Emptiness" (2023), and "Battallia of Modernity" (2023), among others.

Additionally, the artist has created numerous firing paintings and drawings on wood, and installations. These include "Branches of Great Tree (Double-Sided Work)" (2022), "The time when stones will be gather" (2023), "Overcoming the Black Spot" (2022), "Against the Darkness" (2022), and many more. Polina Shcherbyna's paintings for sale are available at auction on the UFDA website.

Polina Shcherbyna's Art Style

The artist interprets her artworks as a dual perspective on the fall of the Anthropocene concept. This duality is central to her creative process, reflected in her installations featuring double-sided artworks on wood using pyrography and carving techniques. These works often incorporate poetry sound as an additional element of the spatial-auditory perception of the work.

On one side, Polina Shcherbyna's art evokes horror and powerlessness in the face of humanity's darker aspects. On the other, her works embody faith and hope for the future.

A primary material in her practice is unprimed linen fabric glued with layers of gelatin, which preserves the fabric's crumpled curves and torn edges. This technique captures the passage of time in the form of bends and folds on the canvas. The prototype of this technical method visually is the shroud. The artist creates images with a partial loss of information, a technique that evokes the illusory nature of time and memory, reminding us that history is merely an imprint left behind.

Her practice revolves around themes of corporeality, employing anti-anatomy techniques. This exploration extends to the spiritual and physical realms of human, evolving into reflections on nature and the imagery of the tree.

In recent years, Polina Shcherbyna's arts have delved into themes of loss and the potential for healing. Drawing on deep ecology, dark vitality, and the body of war, her art examines the sacralization of death, humanity's suffering, and sacrifice in the modern world through the prism of the circle of history and Christianity.

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