The series of textile works represents female history through generations, connecting the artist's experience of the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine with memories of her grandmother, a survivor of the Second World War in a village in the Volyn region of Ukraine. The themes of food, gardening, feeding and teaching children coexist in this reality with images of destruction, lost lives and moments of grief.

Portraits of a grandmother, created in a fictional manner, feature her as an ancestral figure who embodies the experiences of many women, and who can also give hope and strength to keep living. The work of everyday care performed by women is crucial for survival. Sometimes it is the only thing that makes life meaningful in times of despair. If the global acts of powers — wars and violence — make no sense from the perspective of the fragility of human life, small ordinary actions like cooking for loved ones, milking a cow, collecting a harvest from a garden sustain life on a daily basis.

The works are created as collages from fabrics, incorporating clothing. They are made by hand through craft skills acquired by the artist from her other grandmother from Cherkasy, a diligent needlewoman who made clothes for her grandchildren using sewing, knitting and embroidery. She also made her home beautiful, decorating it with her crafts. She believed every girl must know how to do these things, having experienced a lack of goods throughout her life.

The exhibition is dedicated to women — living and those who have passed away — and to their often invisible but fundamental work in the name of life, work that stands against the ugliest violence inflicted on people: war.

About Oksana Briukhovetska

Oksana Briukhovetska is an artist, curator, and writer whose practice centres on textile collage and critical writing about Ukrainian contemporary art. Her work engages themes of memory, trauma, women's labour, feminism, solidarity, and decolonization.

She served as a co-curator for the Ukrainian chapter of Secondary Archive, the platform for women artists from Central and Eastern Europe (2021–2024), and as curator at the Martin Roth Initiative residency for Ukrainian women artists (2024–2025), which culminated in the publication and exhibition Meaning after Loss (2025). In 2025, Oksana published Voices of Black Lives Matter, based on interviews conducted with Americans during the 2020–2021 protests. She lives and works in Kyiv.