After looking at my artworks and hopefully reading some of my commentaries, the curious viewer may ask; ”Where are you originally from?” I’m more than happy to provide all explanations needed.
I was born in the city of Kharkiv, precisely nine months after the seedling of me, in the act of strong passion was successfully deposited into my mother’s uterus. Over the years, I came to believe that I witnessed all those intimate moments, how my parents made love on the couch and conceived me, and even have a memory of a toy version of myself blowing bubbles inside my mother’s belly and then, the strong flashes of autumn light bursting through the birthing ward’s window and making that baby me squint. ”Everything changed when I held the newly born you in my arms…” my mother recalled on the number of occasions,”it just hit me so strong, how beautiful our Kharkiv looked, you must have also seen it with me, how behind the hospital’s window, an autumn was seducing the river!” Later on, when hearing her recollections of the day I was born, I was thinking ,”Which river had been seduced? We have two rivers in our city; the river Lopan and the river Kharkiv, she must have had her hormones all over the place, so that even some insignificant slums had taken the shapes of Paris. In my eyes, Kharkiv was just an ordinary city and I didn’t have anything else to compare it to. As I was growing up, my parents had a bit of a trouble getting along, but I must have received a sufficient amount of love from them both, because I came to be a very happy and content individual.
My parents and I lived in the very small flat together with my Babushka Tasia. I wish that every child in the world was bathed in so much acceptance, indulgence and love which Babushka Tasia had poured over me. Back then, we lived on Reshetnikovsky lane near Plehanovskaya street, not far from the booming tram depot. Over the bridge, a few kilometres away from our street there was a soap production plant, which used to burn the flesh of homeless cats and dogs to brew the needed soap mix. Less than a kilometre away in the other direction, was a chocolate factory called ”Red October.” So our neighbourhood lived in a mercy of wind which was to decide; was it a smell of chocolate or a stench of burning animals, or both we were to inhale and on which day of the week. While the trams were thrashing the rails, cats and dogs melting in inferno, I had a shovel in my hands and the Red October chocolate tucked in my mouth as I was digging my trenches in the garden, preparing for another World War to come. Now looking back at myself growing up in these circumstances I’m not surprised that I have become an artist. Born with a sweet tooth and resilience to the offensive odours, I developed my own, warped take on reality and dappled it with even more twisted sense of humour. So, in my definition the harmony is a barrel full of honey with at least a few scoops of dog poo.
From outside and inside Kharkiv is a European city, with amazing traditions which were severely damaged by Bolsheviks, yet managed to survive. Since 2014, our Kharkiv that had always been a melting point of many different cultures, has gone through the battle of retaining its Ukrainian identity. In my recent visit to my home city, I was thrilled to experience this fresh energy and verve of the younger generations that are creating this new and beautiful image of Ukrainian people- regardless of what their ethnic backgrounds may be.