Ukrainian Artist Creates Powerful Embroideries Peeking Through Hollow Spaces
Diana Yevtukh, a Ukrainian artist, creates beautiful embroideries and places them inside scorched trees or hollow spaces. Her colorful embroidered pieces pop out of hollow spaces in the trees or stones, making them more alive.
The vibrant embroideries seem to offer a glimpse of hope in gloomy surroundings. In an interview with DeMilked, the artist says, “An empty space on the tree finds me first – I start to feel like something that belongs to a place was left out, and then I take measurements and start making the embroidery.”
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
Diana has been creating these embroideries for almost 4 years now. She said, “I do a lot of walking everyday – this is a very special, reflective part of my day, I try to walk at least 7 kilometers each day, but preferably more. During my walks in winter 2018, I started to think about the empty spaces in the bark of the trees I see near sidewalks every single day.”
“I was seeing them as scars, but also as an emptiness which is out there to be filled with a statement. These thoughts hitchhiked in my mind for months, and obviously they’ve met my embroidery thoughts,” she added.
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
“I was experimenting with different mediums to implement my ideas: watercolor and oil paintings, fluid acrylics art, and now it’s the embroidery episode which extends into its fifth year soon. I enjoy working with natural materials, cotton fibers and threads,” she mentioned.
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
Diana further elaborated, “I’m also totally in love with the process of making embroidery: even though it’s long and very tedious, one work can take from 2 to 6 months of everyday work, but the hours spent with threads and the needle are especially warm, pleasant and calming.”
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
“Embroidery is the coziest form of art I’ve tried so far. During the last four years, the longest I tried to live without embroidery was a mere few weeks. In my heart, embroidery always wins the competition with other art mediums,” the artist said.
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
Talking about the effects of the Russian invasion this year, the artist said, “The first 4 months of it have been especially excruciating. The fear, the pain and the despair can hardly be described with words. Russian rockets were raining down everyday all over the country, many of them landing in Lviv – the city where I live and work.Air raid sirens were razing through the calmness of city streets every other day. In this surreal, almost apocalyptical distress, embroidery was my only therapy. It is slightly calmer now in the west of the country, especially with the recent successes of Ukrainian counteroffensive painstakingly pushing invaders out of the country.”
“Still I can’t stop feeling the suffering of my fellow Ukranians in cities closer to the frontline and under occupation – the pain and the terror Russians have brought on our land is beyond comprehensible. The war made me to seek the purpose of civilian living in a warzone setting, so I remade,” she added.
Image source: Diana Yevtukh
Got wisdom to pour?