Ukrainian women artists remember home in Guildhall art exhibition

Eight women artists from Ukraine offered a glimpse of their feelings and experiences for home at an exhibition in Cambridge.

The free show, called Chasing Home, was held in Guildhall and, for most of the artists, it was their first time showing to the public.

Three of the artists involved are refugees from the current war and all are profoundly affected. Five live in Cambridge and surrounding area and the remainder in London.

The exhibition was put together by Valeriya Korbina, who studied illustration at Middlesex University and is working as a barista at Gail’s, a café on Fitzroy Street.

She decided to curate the exhibition to give artists, most of them amateurs, an opportunity to share their feelings of longing for their country and show what is precious about its unique culture.

Valeriya’s own photographs focus on the huge bazaar located in her home city in central Ukraine. Most visually striking is a semi-abstract image of a colourful roof haphazardly put together from myriad sheets of plastic.

Photographs by another artist featured, Anastasia Semerei, comprise still lives of fruit and vegetables including buriak (beetroot), which plays such an important role in Ukrainian cuisine, most famously its many versions of borscht.

And there were exquisite 3D pieces by Katya Timoshenko on show. Constructed from sections of glass soldered together and hand painted, they draw on the Ukrainian tradition of small-scale icons.

Katya spent her childhood holidays with her beloved grandmother who taught her to milk a goat and other rural tasks. On one piece, the artist beautifully captures the image of a goat and on another a scene of a sturdy woman throwing grain to a gaggle of geese.

There is, Valeriya said, something special about all the artists being both Ukrainian and female. Most Ukrainian refugees are women since men are required to remain in their country to contribute to the war effort.

Many of them have arrived with children and sometimes with their own parents, and the women have formed strong supportive networks.

Chasing Home was intended as a tribute to these brave women’s determination to honour connections to their country.