Talutto Maryna

The project “Letters” by Maryna focuses on the story of her family, which was forcibly separated after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. It reflects the traumatic experience of a family’s shattered life and the challenges of forced emigration, as well as the choice made by Maryna’s husband, who abandoned his own artistic practice to join the army in the first days of the war.

Through this deeply personal experience, Maryna reconsiders her perception of emotional transformation and how it reshapes the very paradigm of her family’s existence during wartime — the loss of connection, the longing for one another, the lack of shared time, the impossibility of reunion, and the fact that the only means of communication are the Internet or drawings sent by their daughter to her father. In creating these drawings, Maryna’s daughter conveys all her yearning to see him after victory, her nostalgia for the lost sense of family togetherness, and her hopes and dreams for the future and the family’s reunion.

The ceramic objects, shaped as these “letter-drawings,” embody a symbol of the child’s conscious love for her father. Wherever he may be — in the barracks or in the trenches — he carries these drawings, folded by the small hands of his only daughter, in the pocket close to his heart. It is a love capable of sustaining him and offering a moment of warmth amid the war.

The project is accompanied by a video that documents the artist’s own story of forced emigration and her daughter Ivanka’s process of drawing letters to her father.