Women in Arts Award Ceremony

«Hands and Feet of Colors» from epoxy resin were created as a continuation of Maria Kulikovska's «Scars» sculpture series, in which the hands and feet of the artist were made from ballistic soap. The five sculptures from the series «Hands and Feet of Colors» have become statuettes-awards of the Women in Arts Award initiated by UN Women and the Ukrainian Institute as a part of the HeForShe solidarity movement. This series became a standardized form of the statuettes-awards. Maria Kulikovska creates the copies of her own hands every year specially for Women In Arts Award, partly modified their forms and colors. For the first time, these sculptures were shown in the window of the «Vsi.Svoi» Ukrainian design shop in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The sculpture series «Hands and Feet of Colors» was created for 2018-2019. Some sculptures from this series were cast in summer 2014 after Maria Kulikovska found out about the shooting of her works in the territory of the Izolyatsia Art Centre.

«The questions of patriarchal organization of the society and gender inequality became key in the creation of sculptural hands that are daily «wear off» under the influence of female routine housework by default. After the completion of the series «Scars» Maria Kulikovska addressed the theme of equality in a broader context. The sculpture world of Kulikovska is a place where all genders, skin color, orientation and self-expression are accepted and positively recognized. It is a world where scars inflicted through physical or moral domination, discrimination, social pressure, war or hundreds of other causes are not stigma, but memory and beauty».