What Is Ukraine?

DESCRIPTION The work was created as part of the idea of revealing Ukrainian culture through the prism of modernity. To present Ukraine to the world. The idea of the work itself evolved and changed throughout the process. Because of the emotions, it was difficult to work on it and form the final idea. But I decided to use a combination of traditional symbolic Ukrainian ornaments with elements of contemporary folk art - street art - as a basis. The final concept of the work was formed at the stage of painting the landscape in the window. While painting it, I remembered the warm days of August, the days when for the first time in a long time Kharkiv residents felt relief and peace. For everyone, the period of difficult spring 2022 merged into one terrible long day that seemed to go on forever. Since the end of the summer 2022, life seemed to have shifted from its original point - the endless loop that had been stretching since February began to break... That’s why the work is called 212.02.2022 - symbolizing the end of the month of February, which for many Ukrainians felt like it lasted 212 days. The calm landscape in the center is a small window of hope that leads towards a peaceful future. The work also symbolically uses shards of glass from the windows of the school teacher’s apartment, a person very dear to me, blown out by a blast wave during one of the massive attacks. BIO My name is Anastasiia Ponomarova, I am 21 years old and was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. I grew up and studied in Kharkiv and hardly have been to any other city in Ukraine, considering Kharkiv my small but only home. The only exceptions were trips to Crimea: to visit my family, or rather my mother’s twin sister, her daughter, and other relatives. I spent nearly half of my life there . After the war started in 2014, no one knew what to expect and what catastrophic consequences would follow... Every year it became harder and harder to visit our relatives since we usually didn’t have enough money. I nearly didn’t make it back last time because the war in Ukraine was escalating. Interestingly, the most frightening thing I heard throughout the war was not the explosions, but my mother talking, “Will I live to see my sister again?” Since the beginning of the hostilities, I remember every call from our loved ones. They kept in touch with us every day, worried and praying for us... Sometimes it seemed to me that they were scared more than we were. We were all scared because our family was in danger and we could do nothing but call and write. As a family, we try not to lose hope and believe that soon we will be able to get together again as a big family. That’s all we need...Our faith is the only thing that cannot be taken away from us by force… Follow Anastasiia on Instagram @haise_x2 37 RESTORE UKRAINE