Date & Location
March - May, 2024
Kyiv, Ukraine
March - May, 2024
Kyiv, Ukraine
Pregnant III. Ears of Wheat and Shell Casings”, from the series “After Death Comes Life", - cast of the artist’s pregnant body, made five months before the full-scale invasion. Materials: epoxy resin, ears of wheat, shell casings, and fragments of exploded mines and bombs from Izium, Avdiivka and Bakhmut
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This work reflects on the events of 2023/2024, when Ukrainian farmers’ products were blocked at the Polish border - an act that evoked, for Maria, memories of the collective, transgenerational trauma of the Holodomor. She recalls her grandmother’s stories and how she could never pass by abandoned ears of wheat lying on the road without grief. The wheat used in this piece was collected in her mother’s village. The artist embedded it into the sculpture’s chest and abdomen, together with fragments of exploded mines, bomb shards, and large shell casings sent anonymously from Izium, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka. These remnants of war became part of the sculpture’s internal skeleton – a literal and symbolic embodiment of endurance and transformation. “When I poured epoxy resin over the wheat,” says Maria, “a chemical reaction began – corrosion, and the sculpture darkened, becoming heavy, dirty, melancholic.” Here, life and death are inseparable: fertility and decay merge into a single body of memory.
