Dymchuk Gallery presents Sewing-2, a solo exhibition by Anastasiia Podervianska. The project includes paintings and embroidered and woven works. This is the second exhibition of Podervianska, Sewing, the first part of which was presented this summer at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. The artist previously exhibited her projects Country Horror (2016) and Antique Bestiary (2020) at Dymchuk Gallery.
In her complex, multilayered works, Podervianska is inspired by various aspects of Ukrainian legends, myths, and folk art. Many of her works were created after reading the work Ukrainian People in Their Legends, Religious Views, and Beliefs: Cosmogonic Ukrainian Folk Views and Beliefs by Heorhii Bulashev.
The central image of the Sewing-2 exhibition is the plot of The Girl and the Deer (also known as Olenka and the Deer). This composition, equally replicated in folk embroidery and paintings, depicts a girl in a wreath hugging a deer. Despite such a simple plot for a long time, its semantics were mysterious to scholars. Anastasiia was inspired to study the origins of this composition in the works of art historians Olena Derevska and Olha Denysiuk, who traced the connection between the plot and European and Ukrainian traditions. The author reinterprets it in her own textile and painting works.
The exhibition presents several coats complemented by Anastasiia embroidery and images of flowers and birds cut from mass embroidery of the twentieth century. Podervyanska has worked as a costume designer for theater performances, which has developed her passion for theatrical clothing and the creation of images as artistic objects coats. In the presented works of the author, it is possible to trace a tribute to the Baroque Flemish tradition of tapestry images of Paradise full of birds and animals, established by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Paul Rubens.
Looking at the Sewing-2 exhibition, one can see references not only to the Baroque but also – to the ancient and medieval traditions. A surprised Flora wearing a collage wreath of flowers looks at the viewer from a Hermès-style scarf. The horses, stepping with their hooves around the circumference of the shawl, form la Roue de Fortune, the wheel of fortune, a favorite medieval Gothic motif, complemented by flowers, palmettos, and horseshoes. At the same time, the artist demonstrates a classical Ukrainian folk tradition – kotsy rugs, created in an ancient technique typical of the Ukrainian Eastern Frontier – Slobozhanshchyna – and the Ukrainian West – the Carpathians.
Works of Anastasiia Podervianska demonstrate the multilayered nature of Ukrainian culture, combining baroque splendor, avant-garde brightness, and folk aesthetics. A special place in her work is occupied by the reinterpretation of textiles – from tapestries to massive samples of twentieth-century embroidery, which are integrated into complex artistic collages.
About the author:
Anastasiia Podervianska was born in 1978 in Kyiv.
2002 – she graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Department of Monumental Painting, workshop of M. A. Storozhenko.
Since 2002, she has been a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, since 2020 – Fiber Art Fever.
Laureate of the V and VI All-Ukrainian Textile Triennials and winner of the third prize of the 8th WTA World Textile Art Biennial, Madrid, Spain.
Participated in 25 solo and over 60 group exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad.
The works of Anastasiia are in the collections of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, Eurolab, Museum of Modern Art of Ukraine, National Museum “Kyiv Art Gallery,” Korsak’s Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Museum of the History of the City of Kyiv, and private collections in Ukraine, Poland, USA, Germany, Macedonia, Georgia, and Spain (hotel La Residencia).