Sasha Shevchenko

03 Twice Bound, Once Removed, Born Quick, Born Tangled, Detail

This iterative installation is an object-based reflection on imagination as a tool for creating cultural futures in groups of diaspora. Stemming from the artist’s experience as a female Ukrainian immigrant, the multi-media work envisions a new, clumsy central character likened to Shevchenko’s personal self-reflection. Lyusterko, which means “little mirror” in Ukrainian, begins to appear within the displayed objects, costumes, and photographs. She sits at the cusp of life and death, a fragile decision of fate left to the viewer. She begins to shape new origin stories, narratives, and spaces of healing. From an 8 month long process, traditional mediums like Ukrainian embroidery meet taught, militaristic display strategies or playful symbols and appliqués. Through crafts, haptic making and strategies of display, the elements propose new perspectives on the diasporic experience, Ukrainian resistance, and the compassionate qualities of imaginative play. Lyusterko’s iterative installation becomes a tribute to resiliently hoping, to trans-locality, to the origin stories that also feel like the beginning of ends, and to persistent making when a timely tragedy also feels timeless.

“A sighting in the flesh, way back when in 97’, but only merely. Did she already live a life? Or is she just now coming into being? Is she a figure threaded through time, if we were only to see her?”