Solomiya Sywak
About
My work features eight panels with warped images of newspaper clippings from the war as well as fragments of family photos which flow in and out of recognition, layered on top of each obscuring memories and facts. The archival photos turn into digital patterns spawning across and off the panels, like fading memories of hope in a time of destruction.
It shows a disconnect, as an Australian-Ukrainian only seeing snippets of the invasion fed through the media and small details passed on from family. It shows a history of struggle for independence in Ukraine, one that now has been realised by the rest of the world.
Bio
Solomiya Sywak is a Ukrainian Australian artist based in Sydney studying a Bachelors of Visual Art and Advanced studies majoring in Politics. She blends painting with warped personal archives to explore the intersectionality of these disciplines, especially the duality of her cultural identity in the current context of the r*ssian invasion.