Giving Birth

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kateryna Lysovenko left Kyiv with her children and travelled via Poland to Austria. Like many other artists, she experienced not only the loss of her home, but also the loss of her artistic work, which she had left behind in her studio. On her journey, Lysovenko produced a series of small watercolour and acrylic sketches depicting flat, shapeless, almost faceless figures dissolving into a hostile, gloomy background. Using the medium of painting, she processed her harrowing experiences, significantly altering her earlier means of expression: she covered the paper with faded colours, shrivelled bodies and images of mass graves. In one of the entries in the diary she was keeping, she described herself as a ‘walking cemetery’, a person carrying within her ‘gardens of sorrow’.

“Giving Birth” is one of the works that signpost the next stage of her artistic exploration. Lysovenko posed there a difficult question about life that goes on despite the war raging nearby. As a counterbalance to heroism, encounters with death, and loss in its various forms, Lysovenko evokes other aspects of reality: pleasure, intimacy between a woman and a man, the need to immerse oneself in everyday life and to become a part of a constant, universal cycle of change. Something new is born amidst the sound of falling bombs, and in the intervals between air raids, people try to live as they did before the invasion. 

The painting, belonging to the Arsenal Gallery’s “Collection II”, draws on the experience of motherhood, which in the realities of war assumes a different dimension, providing the woman with a greater strength born of responsibility and unconditional love. The act of birth marks the beginning of something new – not just a new life – that can supply the strength needed to survive in traumatic circumstances. Maintaining sensitivity in times of turmoil can be seen as Lysovenko’s manifesto, the stance of someone who does not shy away from the experiences of war, but looks to universal values for the space to express her resistance to violence. It might be said that her works have regained their colour: shades of pink and light green have replaced the greys and ochres. The figures, however, have not regained their form, contours or faces; they remain sketchy outlines against a swirling, abstract background.

Izabela Kopania
Translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz

Co-financed from the means of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland coming from the Fund for the Promotion of Culture – a state special-purpose fund
Carried out from the City of Białystok budget