In Pieces

From Growing Pains:

In Pieces is a collection of works by five artists affected by the war in Ukraine.
These works speak to the multiplicities and contradictions of living in a shattered present. In turn, the collected voices of these artists, drawing from their fragile present, create the world of this book.

Artists Sophia Bulgakova, Lia Dostlieva, Ola Lanko, Katia Motyleva, and Kateryna Snizhko – makers of Ukrainian origin, living and working in the Netherlands – have each developed new work specifically for this publication. Their projects were made with a child in mind. Some pieces directly address younger audiences or are inspired by children, others draw on the artist’s own memories and experiences. Our goal with In Pieces is to assemble a fragmentary – and certainly incomplete – mosaic of art that can offer a deeper understanding of the war and empower you to engage in conversations about what is happening, beyond the headlines and media images.

The Book of Long Objects by Dostileva beads the fairytale-like stories of successive generations of displaced women in her family onto a thread of her own memory. In Mother Tongue, Motyleva struggles to peel off and piece together her own identity – raised in a post-Soviet time – as she now nurtures her newborn with food from what once felt like home, as the traumas of war surface around her dinner table, turning it into a battlefield. Snizhko’s I wish this paper had remained blank reflects the artist’s struggle with the things she feels she must address. The act of embossing, creating abstract landscapes of colour, becomes a way to put distance between herself and painful events.

Bulgakova’s we all woke up today from some kind of explosions embeds her personal exchanges with friends into elusive stereograms. The technique refers to the ubiquitous stereographic publications popular during the artist’s childhood. Her sombre black-and-white interpretation of it speaks to the inaccessibility of her experience to most non-Ukrainians and the waning media coverage of the ongoing war. Finally, Lanko’s Istopia is a game-like experience that invites us to explore emotion and communication through play.

The hardcover with five artist booklets was designed by Ayumi Higuchi and published by Growing Pains in November 2023.