Woman - Berehynia

An exhibition of portraits of women by the artist Tetiana Cherevan.

Only please, come back alive. Come back — we are waiting for you, peaceful and impossibly beautiful: mothers, friends, grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters. Each of us is the whole of Ukraine. We will fill life again for you with living and embroidered flowers — the life you are winning back for us.

The present moment demands documenting from us as never before. The information space is saturated with photographs of our soldiers and of the war in general. This series of works by Tetiana Cherevan is a document of another kind — about those who not only wait, but do everything within a woman’s power to bring the boys home from the war. Until now an abstract word, berehynia has taken on entirely concrete names in our present. Today it is most often replaced by the word volunteer, but these women will enter history precisely as Berehyni — guardians not only of a soldier’s life, but of Ukraine itself.

In these works the artist has brought together the pencil, as an instrument of strict documentary record, with contemporary colour media as a way of giving the portraits romance and decorative quality — and it is these that turn a particular woman into a general historical symbol.

Photos from opening