Series "When I Lay Down, I Became The Garden. I Am A Vase"

In the "When I Lay Down, I Became The Garden. I Am A Vase" series, a war remnant—a spent shell casing from Bakhmut—becomes the mold for new casts. The fragment of weaponry, once a vessel of death, is transformed into the base for transparent forms filled with flowers and healing herbs.

The vases appear as fossilized organisms—time capsules where the debris of war meets fragile traces of life. Embedded within the resin are shell casings from Izium, fragments of destruction recast into a new corporeality. Inside are dried herbs and flowers, protective plants that heal and sustain life even amid devastation.

Here, the “vase” is not a decorative object but a symbol of the body: a vessel holding memory, pain, and the possibility of healing. It becomes a body that contains both death and care, both loss and continuation.

Transparency underscores the impossibility of escaping the experience of war: even when sealed, its fragments remain visible within. Yet in this fragility lies a new strength—the transformation of what was once lethal into a talisman, of ruins into a garden.