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- Kyiv in the evening
Skuharieva Maryna
In “Kyiv in the evening”, the artist depicts a nude female figure — a motif to which Maryna has consistently returned throughout her artistic practice. The woman on the canvas is shown in an unnatural pose; her face is barely discernible, and her body bears marks resembling wounds: stitched lines along the torso and thighs, embroidered calves, a textured face, and even hair that appears to convey pain.
The work incorporates several elements characteristic of Skuhareva’s oeuvre: a background divided into two contrasting colors, embroidery motifs, the depiction of a coat of arms in the upper right corner, and a title that references the Kyiv newspaper. This “journalistic” inclination was inherited from her mother, who worked in the media.
Maryna Skuharieva (1962, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian artist and one of the key figures of the “New Ukrainian Wave.” Her interdisciplinary practice spans painting, embroidery, textile, and drawing, exploring the intersections of intimacy, memory, language, and the female experience in contemporary culture.
She studied at the Taras Shevchenko State Art School in Kyiv, the Dzhemal Dagestan Art School (1977–1981), and the Lviv State Institute of Decorative and Applied Arts (1982–1988, Department of Textile Art). In 1992–93, she was awarded the Christoph Merian Stiftung scholarship in Basel. Since 1993, she has lived and worked in Kyiv.
Skuharieva’s work reveals how the private becomes public and how everyday life can hold quiet resistance. Her series “Good Housewives” (1997–2007), “Fragments” (2001–2003), and “All About the News” (2015–2019) combine drawing, text, and embroidery to examine repetition, care, and the texture of memory.
In 2025, her large-scale solo exhibition “Registry Office (RATS)” took place at the Potocki Palace in Lviv, bringing together paintings, collages, and textile works that merge domesticity and ritual. The title alludes to social and emotional transitions — marriage, birth, loss — that mark both private and collective histories.
Her works have been shown at the PinchukArtCentre, National Art Museum of Ukraine, Voloshyn Gallery, Dzyga Gallery, Yermilov Centre, Christoph Merian Stiftung (Basel), M17 Contemporary Art Center, and Książnica Pomorska (Poland).
Skuharieva’s art treats embroidery as an act of remembrance and the painted line as a gesture of empathy. Through the materiality of fabric, silence, and repetition, she transforms the ordinary into spaces of reflection and tenderness