Lilia Petrovaia an artist from Kharkiv. Graduate of the Graphic Department of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, majoring in “Book Graphics”.
Works with graphics, illustration, interaction between graphic and verbal, as well as ceramics. Studies the practices of folk art, collaborates with Ukrainian clothing brands and creates comics and zines. Develops her graphic universe, where, faced with life problems, naive creatures are traumatized, have lessons about the world, and ask themselves important questions. The main theme of Lilia`s art is the immensity and absurdity of being.
Lilia has participated in many exhibitions and residencies in Ukraine and abroad. She is engaged in independent artistic practice and teaches drawing at the Kharkiv School of Architecture.
Sunny Corners and Walls
“Thinking about what a home is for me, what this image consists of, what I have associations with it, I remembered the good and cozy things: childhood, games, the order I constructed on the shelves and windowsill, looking out the window, birdsong, warm sunlight, which creates shadows from the trees on the walls of the room or is reflected in the window of the house opposite. I remembered a safe and decorated place.
Today, this place, where the image of the home, everything with which home is associated, was formed, is in constant danger due to the war, has broken and patched windows, the view behind them is mutilated by debris, is in a state of periodic tremors from explosions. However, the sun continues to shine, penetrates the surviving windows, and casts shadows on the walls in the empty room.
So the mention of home for the last two years has been full of longing, anger, despair, fear, tenderness, joy, and comfort for me. Because even in times of something similar to the apocalypse, birds sing, the sun continues to shine and bring warm, shot trees and houses continue to cast shadows. The sun shines gently and sees everything, it’s a pity that it can’t help the danger.
In the “Sunny Corners and Walls” series, I tried to tell about the transmuted corners and walls, rooms and windows, which, even in suffering, are not deprived of the sun, through the interaction of paper sculptures, childlike in form and whimsical in content, and sunlight.
