Community: Ten Ukrainian Women To Take Part in Public Art Project For Refugee Week
‘InFlight-OnLanding’ – Photo Museum Ireland, Meeting House Square, Dublin 2.
A public art project by Varvara Keidan Shavrova and 10 Ukrainian women participants
Where: Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
(and in the Artists’ Project Space at Photo Museum Ireland.)
‘InFlight-OnLanding’ is a public art installation that addresses the human aspect of the crisis brought on by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Varvara Keidan Shavrova, an Irish artist with Ukrainian heritage , is working collaboratively with ten Ukrainian female refugees and migrants now based in Ireland. The impressive collaborative piece will be mounted as an overhead outdoor parachute-like installation in Meeting House Square. The artwork invites viewers to look up and share in the women’s feelings of suspension and displacement and their sense that Ireland is a place of safety and refuge.
Over a series of workshops and masterclasses in Photo Museum Ireland, the group created artworks exploring the women’s responses to events of the last 18 months. The women were invited to bring in personally meaningful photographs and learned how to print imagery derived from them by photographic silkscreen onto fabric. The participants worked on the images through appliqué, montage and traditional Ukrainian folk craft embroidery techniques. Undertaking this tactile, meditative, process created a space where the women could process and reflect on their own experiences and share aspects of their stories in a visual form.
A personal testimony from one of the women artists:
‘It is the very beginning of spring and I arrived in Dublin three weeks ago. On the road of timelessness, between Februaries. Like jumping into the abyss. For the first time. When you have a parachute under your belt, but you never know for sure, what if it’s the one, the only time it won’t open?…And as I stand at the edge of the abyss, staring into the thick, bottomless darkness, I have only a parachute behind me.’ – Tetiana Odokiienko (Kharkiv).
Further examples of the groups’ work, and documentation about the workshop process, is on display in the Artists’ Project Space in Photo Museum Ireland.
Participants: Tetiana Kovalova (Kyiv), Svitlana Litmanova (Chmielnickyi), Olha Matso (Kyiv), Anna Mosina (Mariupol), Katerina Naumova (Mariupol), Tetiana Odokiienko (Kharkiv), Tetiana Piontkovska (Kyiv), Liubov Poltavets (Enerhodar), Svetlana Vicheva (Artsyz), Maryna Zaretska (Kyiv).
For more information visit:
photomuseumireland.ie/inflight-onlanding
Images: Workshop and Printing with Master Printmaker, Louise Peat at Black Church Print Studio as part of InFlight-OnLanding Project.
About the Project: Artist Varvara Keidan Shavrova is leading PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXTILE WORKSHOPS at the Photo Museum Ireland in Dublin in collaboration with Irish Refugee Council, Black Church Print Studio and supported by Business to the Arts.
Photo Musuem Ireland invited creative women to join in making a parachute – a large-scale joint textile photo artwork. Through stitching, embroidery, sewing and appliqué, and screen printing on fabric, they explore the themes of flight and swimming, safety and landing, hope and peace. The result of creativity will be exhibited at Photo Museum Ireland and in Meeting House Square during Refugee Week 2023. The goal of the project is to create a parachute as a symbol through which to express their emotions, their feelings, their pain caused by the impossibility to land and return to your normal life.
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