Stories of Ukrainian artists

Anna Ryazanova

I arrived in Tartu on 15 March 2022. I left my home city, Harkiv, behind and I came here, for at the time my child was studying at the University of Tartu.

I have been involved in art for as long as I can remember. After arriving in Estonia no complexity or pain has been added to my works. Quite the opposite: the colours in my works have become brighter and so it is easier for me to go on. I have begun to notice more of what is around me: different architecture, different colours, which have motivated me to pick up my brush. Here I am somehow different myself.

I paint what catches my eye and I try to communicate the mood of the surrounding space as it seems to me. While living here art has brought me together with new and interesting people; art has brought me friends and made me a part of Tartu. 

Martha Martovska

I came to Estonia at the end of April, 2022.

My home city is Donetsk, but after Russian forces invaded and created their marionette republic there, I left for Mariupol. And soon after that I had to flee again, leaving everything behind…

I am a factory worker. I have taught myself art and thus I consider my work to be naivistic. Sheltering from war in Estonia has not significantly changed the nature of my creative work, but what has been added to it is the aesthetics of pain and loss – which has never been in my works before.

Art is my therapy. When I am painting, I feel less pain. When painting I also think about the people who will later view these works. They are people close to me and my friends, but strangers as well; perhaps when they look at my pictures, they will understand the purifying pain as well as the joy that art can bring. 

Hanna Davõdova

I arrived in Estonia in the first days of March, 2022.

My home city is Kiev. But in Estonia I met my soulmate – I married, and now I live and work in Tartu. I am a teacher and child psychologist by training, but art has always been a part of my life.

Art is therapeutic. When I look at my paintings after some time has passed, I see how they seem to talk to me about my past and show me where I was at one time, what was in my thoughts and what was happening around me. After leaving my homeland, the themes of my works have certainly changed, as well as my attitude towards Ukraine. Little by little I have begun to understand larger questions and their importance – to what people and culture do I belong? Where are my roots? What is the connection between myself, my work and my forebears? I feel that after leaving I have become even more strongly rooted in Ukrainian culture and I can find more and more of Ukraine inside me. 

Nadja Karpenkova

I left Herson in June 2022 and came to Estonia with my daughter, who already had prior professional contacts here. This has made it easier to adapt here.

I have been involved with art my whole life. I have learned various techniques and have also learned the trade of theatre artist, but my favourite means of expression is water colour on silk – this is something I have learned on my own and practiced for years.

When I arrived in Estonia, at first it seemed that I could not create anything anymore. Then I began making black-and-white drawings and that was how the series “Thinking out loud” was born; it is different from everything else I have done before.

Now I have started painting on silk more. The basis for my water colours has always been improvisation and lightness – these show how I perceive nature, music and life.

My creative work is my life and my nature.

Viktoria Berezina

I arrived in Estonia during the night of 3 October 2022 from my home city, Herson.

Like all other Ukrainians, I am no longer the same; our lives are not as they were before, and our work carries completely different meanings. I have experienced on my own skin that war not only destroys material things, but also a person’s inner world. The result is chaos, which leaves black holes in one’s memory and emptiness in the soul.

What can one fill them with in order to get one’s whole self back?

I try to find answers to this question through my creative work. Art has become a language that speaks much more deeply and more sincerely than ordinary words. We must speak so loudly about what is happening in Ukraine that the whole world can hear. I often say that each one of us is a soldier, but instead of an automatic weapon we carry pencils and brushes.

When creating art I think about Ukrainians, about people close to me and my parents who were left behind; I think about my friends who are trying to start a new life somewhere abroad. I think about people’s broken fates …Being away from my homeland I understand my own roots better.

I also think a great deal about nature at home. The beautiful area around Herson always gave me strength and inspiration, but today the occupiers are mercilessly destroying that beauty and all that lives there. Wherever the Russian soldier has walked, all that is left is ashes, a wasteland, withering.

But nature keeps sprouting and growing again. Nature is the source of hope; it heals the soul and awakens us to new life, as if after a long winter. And I believe that we Ukrainians will sprout again, just like nature… we will be restored, like phoenixes, those amazing creatures, and we will restore the world around us with new strength…