Kopytsia Alina

Listen to the artist’s voice recording about the work (in Ukrainian)

My first art education was primarily focused on academic drawing. For almost ten years, I honed my technique, spending countless hours studying anatomy, light, and proportions. When that training ended, I wanted to forget it all — to free myself from the rigid discipline that left no room for error, breath, or spontaneity.

Over time, I returned to drawing — but this time without the desire to be “correct.” I began making watercolor sketches of people who fascinated me. It was more than observation; it was a way of speaking, feeling, and touching the world through gaze and color. I asked my models to choose the pose in which they wished to be portrayed, and almost always I saw how they unconsciously reproduced familiar gender roles: men occupied space freely, displaying strength, while women automatically emphasized their curves, remaining within the boundaries of “femininity.”

One day, I met him — a man with long hair, soft skin, and a delicate waist. His body seemed to defy all categories. I drew him again and again, trying to understand where one ends and the other begins, where the line lies between the masculine and the feminine, between the real and the imagined. Later, I began to paint the two of us together — from photographs and videos we created. I tried to capture the tender dance of bodies and souls, where all boundaries dissolved.

I painted with watercolor, using a lot of water. The colors spilled beyond the bodies on the paper, forming new shapes. Something non-existent yet captivating began to appear. I stopped resisting this chaos and allowed the watercolor to flow. Water, ink, and pigment merged and lived their own life on the page.

This series of works was created in Zurich between 2017 and 2021.