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Briukhovetska Oksana
In the turbulence of war, our perception of natural phenomena—and the sounds they produce—changes profoundly. What once sounded like a thunderstorm now evokes the noise of shelling. Whenever I hear thunder, I catch myself wondering whether it is truly a storm or the sound of Russian strikes. Even the Ukrainian word hrad, once associated with hail, has become inseparable from the name of a multiple rocket launcher.
Yet war has not only appropriated the language and imagery through which we understand nature; it has inflicted immense and tangible damage on the natural environment itself, destroying and transforming it. The image of blood-soaked earth therefore speaks not only of the people who have shed their blood on this land, but also of the ecological catastrophes brought about by war.
Oksana Briukhovetska is a Ukrainian artist, researcher, and curator. She was born in 1973 in Kyiv. She studied at the Ivan Trush Lviv College of Applied Arts (1989–1994) and the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (Kyiv, 1997–2003). In 2021–2023, she earned an MFA from the Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan (USA). She lives and works in Kyiv.
Her artistic practice spans painting, textile, curatorial, and collaborative projects. Briukhovetska explores themes of feminism, embodiment, social justice, and traumatic memory. She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and internationally, and worked as a curator and designer at the Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv, 2009–2019).
In 2025, her book Black Lives Matter Voices was published by Choven, based on interviews conducted in the U.S. during the 2020–2021 protests, accompanied by her series of portrait illustrations. During Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she created the tapestry series Songs and Flowers for Ukraine (2022–2023), dedicated to the tragic pages of Ukrainian history and the lived experience of war.
Her latest solo exhibition SUGAR AND POPPY (KUT_artistrunspace, Kyiv, January 18 – February 9, 2025) is dedicated to the memory of her grandmother, Halyna Kysil. The project features textile portraits—some based on archival photographs, others imagined—woven together with childhood memories of scents, tastes, and stories that preserve the experience of several generations.
