SASHA SHEVCHENKO



/PROJECTS
/WRITING
/ABOUT













With shadows you are as much in control of them as you are not. And two things that were very clear combine to become something completely other. 

But once our eyes have construed pattern, is there really any going back? 

Does it really matter, the name of their owners? 




@lyusterko
2022

Twice Bound
Once Removed
Born Quick
Born Tangled


Ignite Gallery, Toronto

About
This iterative installation is an object-based reflection on imagination as a tool for envisioning diasporic becoming. Stemming from the artist’s experience of displacement, the work conceives a fragile central character as Shevchenko’s personal self-reflection. Lyusterko, meaning “little mirror” in Ukrainian, gradually emerges within the displayed objects, costumes, and photographs. She takes shape at the cusp of life and death, of presence and absence, her precarious fate hinging on the viewer’s decision.

Lyusterko begins to articulate new origin stories, narratives and spaces of healing. In her making, traditional media like Ukrainian embroidery meet militaristic display strategies, entwined with playful symbols and appliqués. Through craft, haptic making, and presentation strategies, fragmented elements propose new perspectives on migration, Ukrainian resistance, and the compassionate qualities of imaginative play. Lyusterko’s recursive apparitions become a tribute to resilient hope, to trans-locality, to origin stories that also feel like beginnings of the end, and to persistent making in times of tragedy that feel timeless.

2022, mixed media, installation view at Ignite Gallery.