Viktoriia Cherniakhivska (UKR)

Home isolation became a stop, a break to think about where I want to move and what I want to create.

I spent this year mostly at home with my son and husband. We didn’t travel. I started growing plants and baking cookies more often because I read that the smell of baking is soothing. There are too many worries. I looked at other people’s and my works and analyzed what I like, what I consider beautiful.

Eventually, I decided that digital collage is the best medium for me now.

I also felt a lack of live meetings and dreamt of visiting exhibitions in spacious halls. Lockdown gave a feeling of isolation in the room, so I had to take a closer look at what I have at home. So there are a lot of houses and plants among my images. Contemplation of plant growth as slowing down, waiting, grounding, is a way to calm down.

My work is an attempt to see me during the lockdown, to understand what makes me happy during the home isolation. I never grew anything before the pandemia, I only had a cactus, because everything else withered. When the lockdown was announced and circumstances seemed new and unknown, and all the news was disturbing, at first I was afraid that now even going to the grocery store would be risky because of the possibility of infection.

So I decided to make my house a fortress and grow my food at home. Wearing a mask and gloves for the first time, I went to the store and bought the seeds of various garden plants: arugula, lettuce, basil, parsley. I also bought flower seeds, soil, and pots. I planted it all, and the kitchen balcony turned into my garden, I watered it every day.

And growing plants turned out to be such a pleasure! It was the first time when I saw up close how the first sprout breaks through the ground, how gratefully and quickly it all grows. I didn’t know before that all plants first grow two identical leaves, and later other leaves of plants become different and recognizable. So in this collage is tiny growing arugula, and I look at it and marvel and feel like a creator who gives life.