Sasha Yakovleva

Fractured Kinship

This painting presents identity as a fractured condition shaped by geopolitical conflict and inherited cultural tension. Three figures referencing Russian, Ukrainian, and my own hybrid identity are positioned in a state of visual and emotional tension, where proximity does not resolve separation. Repetition in patterning and ornamentation suggests a shared cultural lineage, while distortions and breaks in symmetry interrupt continuity, exposing rupture within that inheritance. Hand-sewn beadwork extends the surface through labour and repair, where stitching becomes both construction and fragmentation. This process slows the image materially, embedding time and repetition into the surface rather than treating it as purely visual. Decorative elements function simultaneously as connection and disruption, holding together what cannot fully reconcile.