Faculty of Art

Printmaking & Publications

Nadiya Svirsky

Interstitial Pathmaking

When the tunnels and hallways and stairwells all start to overlap, and the reference is no longer rooted in reality.

“Interstitial Pathmaking and Interstitial Pathmaking (Reprise) are two works that were both created from the bones of earlier renditions of "portal" architectures. Relatively representational paintings of my childhood apartment building's empty stairwell are overlaid with photographs of subway tunnels that I now traverse. These moments of traversing liminal spaces are from entirely different geographical and time points, yet somehow they feel analogous, related. The various paintings and prints are blended and morphed in photoshop and rendered anew with watercolour and ink on paper. By working through multiple layers of translation of an image through photograph, drawing, painting and print, back into painting again, I am mimicking the process of the abstraction of memory which over time becomes much more self-referential and mythologized, rather than connected to any specific space or time.”