«Long ago», Cherkasy, Sklad №5, 26.04–17.05.2025

Mykolaiv is an industrial city where I lived until I was 17.

There weren’t many places for entertainment, but we knew how to find them. The city holds many memories for me. It’s gray and, at the same time, intensely sunny. There are many magical spots, whose magic an ordinary person might hardly feel, because these places carry the memory of the events that happened there.

It wasn’t that long ago, yet it feels like something distant, almost unreachable. In the clearings, there were always guitars and bicycles—that’s what our lives looked like back then.

While I was painting, a kaleidoscope of flashes and images of the moments I shared with my friends and family passed before my eyes.

For me, Mykolaiv is something bright and very green; I respect it, and I am grateful to it. This series is about a life we can no longer return to, because we have grown up—with all the games we invented and the people around me. I painted a part of it, but there’s still so much more I would love to share with people—those fragments of Mykolaiv that filled my (our) life with energy.