Zirka Savka
ARTIST STATEMENT
My creativity is my way of capturing life. Through it, I understand how to exist in this world, to perceive it and the people in it.
Everyone needs everyone, no one is excessive, no one is an outsider, and everyone has their own meaning. These thoughts come to me when I’m in a forest. I really like trees. I just admire them. I can stand in the park and watch how they grow, their symbiosis between the young ones and the old ones, they are interconnected and meaningful. For me, this is some kind of ideal world, a utopia that would be perfect for humanity.
After the full-scale Russian invasion, I continued to paint, obviously touching on the topic of war in my art practices. I also engage in sociocultural activities, although in a new way, filled with new meanings and tasks.
ROOTS
A woman, an arrow, a bow, power = defense
A woman, an arrow through the heart, pain = resilience
A tiger, power, pain, fight = resistance
That is how I have been feeling from the very first days. The enemy won’t see my tears, I won’t let myself be pitied, no matter how hard it is. Because as soon as it happens, I lose. I don’t have the right to lose.
We are not fighting for profit, we are protecting our land, our place of memory, and our ancestry. “Remember where your roots dwell”—the words of my husband, who is defending our country on the front line right now.
And I, for the time being, will be on the home front, doing everything I can to continue what our family started, to preserve the memory and create the future.
“Defense”, 2022, rice paper, Chinese painting color, 178 х 96 cm
Price: USD 2 400
– 50% of the price will be donated to Ukrainian charity
“Resistance”, 2022, rice paper, Chinese painting color, 178 х 96 cm
Price: in private collection
“Resilience”, 2022, rice paper, chinese painting color, 178 х 96 cm
Price: USD 2 400
– 50% of the price will be donated to Ukrainian charity
About
FRONTIER OF THE MEMORY.
Special Ukrainian project on Taiwan Annual
Curator – Marta Trotsiuk
Artists:
- Myroslava Bachkur
- Zirka Savka
- Veronika Cherednychenko
Artists of the online exhibition:
- Denys Metelin
- Taras Haida
At the invitation of the Association of Visual Arts in Taiwan and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan and Taipei Representative Office in Poland.
Curatorial text
“Hello dear viewer,
you are looking at a project which was created in Taipei by three artists and a curator from Ukraine. Memory and its different aspects is the main topic here. The art research touches our personal experience as individuals who are living and creating in a certain time of the history of our civilization. We believe we are now on the edge of shifting tectonic plates of human evolution, facing the creation of fundamental principles through conflicts.
We ourselves were dragged into the epicenter of the process, into war. Living through it, we analyze and reconsider many aspects of our past, trying to pay special attention to the present and fight for our future. We do this through art and with the tool of our memory.”
Marta Trotsiuk, curator of the exhibition.