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- Outsiders 1
Polina Verbytska
The project Outsiders was created during my forced emigration to Lithuania. During this period, I did not have access to a studio and worked from home, using found materials, in particular, fragments of wood washed ashore by the Baltic Sea. From the very beginning, I perceived these sculptures as remnants: fragments of something that had lost its original place and form, yet still remained physically present.
I have always perceived the artist as a kind of outsider within society. In the condition of emigration, this feeling doubles: you find yourself outside familiar social structures not only because of your profession, but also because of the loss of a stable identity. You become a stranger among everyone.
Zygmunt Bauman describes identity as a kind of “adhesive” — a narrative we construct about ourselves, for ourselves and for others, in order to organize the chaotic and uneven experience of life. In this project, I am interested in the moment when this adhesive falls apart and there is no longer anything from which to reconstruct a story. When the possibility of telling something coherent about oneself disappears, only presence remains — material, physical, heavy.
The sculptures in Outsiders possess a recognizable human form and bodily plasticity, yet they are entirely deprived of individuality. They have no faces, no gesture, no psychological characteristics. They exist as remnants of someone they no longer are. Foreign objects embedded within their bodies do not integrate into the form — they coexist in conflict, obstructing one another and emphasizing a condition of discomfort and incompatibility.
This project is about outsiderhood as a state of being. About something inappropriate, uncomfortable, and inexplicable that remains after the loss of history. When nothing can be explained anymore, but presence still persists.
Polina Verbytska is a contemporary Ukrainian artist and curator. She works with the body as a material and psychological carrier of tension, fragmentation, and the instability of boundaries. Her artistic practice explores situations in which form ceases to perform a protective function, and corporeality becomes a zone of direct contact without symbolic mediation.
She works across drawing, sculpture, and spatial installation. Rather than focusing on narrative or the illustration of events, she approaches bodily states as structural consequences of social and historical pressure.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2026 — Sensitive Spot, White World, Kyiv, Ukraine
2025 — Superficiality, Squat 17, Kyiv, Ukraine
2024 — Body Dialogues (residency and solo exhibition), John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago, USA
2024 — The Outsider, 5 Malūnai Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
2022 — Reflections, Karas Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2021 — Metamorphosis, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kherson, Ukraine
2020 — Autumn Baroque, Transformart Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia
2020 — R Chroniques, Dukley European Art Community, Budva, Montenegro
2020 — Intervention, Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art, Odesa, Ukraine
2020 — In Shadow, Karas Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2015 — Art Barbakan, Kyiv, Ukraine
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2025 — 14th International Fine Arts Festival, Kranj, Slovenia
2025 — Syconium, Imagine Point Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2024 — Surreal Salon, Jackson Junge Gallery, Chicago, USA
2024 — Merging with the Garden, Shero, Mriya Gallery, New York, USA
2023 — War — @War/Love/War, 12th International Fine Arts Festival, Kranj, Slovenia
2023 — International Drawing Biennale, Pula, Croatia
2023 — Centre for Contemporary Arts, Pivka, Slovenia
2022 — Before the War, Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art, Ukraine
2022 — Black and White, Nida, Lithuania
2017 — Summer Show, Voloshyn Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
Residencies:
2024 — John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago, USA
2021 — Menu Zona, Klaipėda, Lithuania
2020 — Dukley European Art Community, Budva, Montenegro
2020 — Exodus Social Club, Stonebridge, Montenegro
Curatorial and Educational Activities
2024 — Founder and curator of Draft Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
2024 — Curator of the solo exhibition Body Dialogues, John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago, USA
2022 — Art teacher at the social club Liberi, Klaipėda, Lithuania (organization and facilitation of art workshops for socially vulnerable children)
2021 — Curator of Katia Granova’s solo exhibition, Dukley European Art Community, Budva, Montenegro
Projects:
2020 — Museum of Whimsy, Oregon, USA
2019 — Mobile Monuments, Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art, Ukraine
Selected Publications:
Support Your Art — “Please Touch: Polina Verbytska”
Pro Idei — “Weird Sculpture”
Chicago Gallery News — The Body Dialogues
The Village Ukraine — feature on the exhibition Superficiality
Education:
2007–2010 — National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Faculty of Fine Arts
Materials and Collections:
Verbytska works with contemporary materials including resins, polymers, silicone, paper, and mixed media.
Her works are held in the collection of the Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as in private collections in Ukraine, Europe, the United States, and Australia.
