Vasylyna Buryanyk
‘My Suits (for wearing on the territory of the Genocide (1) and outside its borders (2))’, 2024, polyester, paper, metal, author’s technique, 2 x 57 x 91 cm
Vasylyna works with textiles, primarily transparent polyester fabrics (derived from petroleum), creating three-dimensional objects and panels in her own technique. She regards her artistic practice as a study centred on environmental and social issues. Since the full-scale invasion, her work has become even more engaged with the many aspects of war—displacement, memory, trauma, solidarity, responsibility and the impact of conflict on nature. For Vasylyna, textiles are a space of free experimentation with their physical and chemical properties. She employs water, air, chemical compounds and processes such as oxidation, pigmentation, crystallisation, electrification and the effects of light and air movement. In her practice, these processes become the very means through which she constructs her artistic message, achieving a peculiar visual expression and expanding the possibilities of working with fabric as a medium.
Her project ‘My Suits (for wearing on the territory of the Genocide (1) and outside its borders (2))’ is based on her personal experiences—changes in daily life brought about by the full-scale war and how they are approached both in Ukraine and other countries. Having lived at times in Ukraine and at times abroad since 2022, Vasylyna shares the experience of inhabiting worlds that are fundamentally different in a striking, at times painful way. Attempts to explain these contrasts to people living outside Ukraine are often perceived as overly emotional or even absurd. Playing on the existential contrast in her project, Vasylyna, with bitter irony, invites viewers to symbolically ‘try on’ her own experience as a way of bringing these different worlds a little closer together and reaching some understanding.
