Olesia Kryvolapova

 During the Summer Show, I had the opportunity to present the combined results of my work to date.

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 This project explores memory, time, and identity through materials that carry traces of the artist’s childhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Using discarded pieces of old furniture as both printing blocks and sculptural elements, the work draws on surfaces marked by age, use, and natural decay. These organic textures are combined with laser-cut plates based on childhood drawings, blending traditional wooden printmaking with contemporary digital processes.

 From these components, the artist forms the outline of an imaginary house — a structure that cannot exist in reality, built from fragments of memory and imagination. The installation includes both the original blocks and the prints taken from them, creating a layered dialogue between past and present, handmade and machine-cut, solid object and fading recollection.

 As the materials continue to age and shift, the work “breathes,” changing subtly over time. Through this gradual transformation, it generates life by treating memory not as a static archive but as something that continually evolves, erodes, and renews itself.

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 As a way to represent the memory of my younger self from the perspective of who I am today, I decided to create a series of etchings based on my childhood drawings. I produced 12 different prints using softgroundt and aquatint techniques.
 

 During my research into printmaking methods, I experimented with a variety of media, exploring how each technique could shape and deepen the emotional tone of my work. Much of my practice is guided by the desire to give visual form to feelings that often remain unspoken—those delicate, intense emotions that emerge in moments of crisis or quiet struggle within everyday life.

 My artworks aim to translate these inner states into texture, rhythm, and imagery, allowing the viewer to sense the emotional landscape that cannot always be expressed through words.

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 During creating process concist a lot of experiments.

 I combine photographs of my hometown, Kharkiv, Ukraine (2025), with texts and artworks made during my workshops by Ukrainian children living in the UK in the same year. Together, they explore the themes of home and family. These pieces exist in dialogue with one another, revealing two parallel realities unfolding at the very same moment in time.

 In the photographs, the traces of war and absence become visible—empty streets, damaged buildings, and quiet corners that still hold memories of daily life. In contrast, the children’s drawings and words reflect warmth, imagination, and hope, shaped by their new surroundings yet still deeply connected to the place they left behind.

 These voices and images together create a shared story of belonging and resilience. The distance between them—between war and peace, loss and renewal—reveals how Ukrainians live and feel today, and how the idea of home persists even when the home itself has changed.
The work is created using photolithography and chine collé on various Japanese papers, with hand-sewn elements.

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 The exhibition “Small Objects” is a series of monoprints reflecting on the artist’s childhood in the 1990s. It revisits early memories and lived experiences from that time. 

 A range of materials and techniques was used to evoke an atmosphere where childhood naivety coexists with the harsh realities of the era.

 The works include prints of children’s clothes — objects that no longer belong to the present, remnants of a long-passed time. They appear lonely and isolated, without an owner or place to belong, like ghosts from a distant past. Yet at the same time, they remain an inevitable part of the present, symbolising traces of innocence and a belief in a brighter future.

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 This series of ceramic artworks, combined with monoprints and photographs, represents fragments of the past—memories stored away in drawers, only resurfacing in brief moments when someone takes the time to look inside.

 I created 12 blocks by casting wooden parts from old furniture and incorporating prints of children’s clothes and photographs from my family archive. 

 Through this process, I aimed to create a monument to past periods of life — a quiet tribute to what has been forgotten, hidden, or preserved only in memory.

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 I used pieces of old furniture both for prints and as part of the installation. I created laser cuts based on my childhood drawings and used them for printing. From the blocks, I attempted to construct the shape of an imaginary house—one that cannot exist in reality.

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 This project is dedicated to Saltivka, the vast and once-vibrant district of Kharkiv that, before the Russian invasion, breathed with the lives of nearly half a million people. It was a place where ordinary days unfolded quietly—until the sky opened in violence and shattered the rhythm of life.

 I created this series during my residency at Graham Bignell Studio, working with collograph, linocut, and letterpress to build a visual language capable of holding both memory and rupture. Through twenty prints, I tried to trace the abrupt, almost impossible shift from the familiar warmth of home to the stark reality of destruction. Each piece carries fragments of the streets, the silence after explosions, and the weight of thousands of interrupted lives.

 This body of work stands apart from my later projects. It was born at a moment when the shock was still sharp, when fear and disbelief clung to every thought. The emotions were too fresh to be filtered, so they settled directly into the textures of the prints—raw, trembling, and unguarded.

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 These prints belong to a project dedicated to the war in Ukraine.

 After 24 February 2022, people were abruptly forced to adapt to a new, harsh reality—one shaped by fear, uncertainty, and irreversible change.

 I turned to various printmaking techniques to convey my immediate, unfiltered emotions in response to the news from my homeland. Each piece reflects the tension, sorrow, and shock of witnessing my country enter a moment of darkness, while also holding onto the fragile threads of hope and resilience that emerged in those first days.

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