We're excited to announce Sasha Shevchenko as the recipient of the The Public Gallery Window Exhibition Career Launcher. Sasha's exhibition, Жнець Reaper will be on display at the Public Gallery from December 21, 2022 to February 23, 2023. Sasha's work was selected from the online 2022 GradEx exhibition.
Жнець (Reaper )
December 21, 2022 to February 23, 2023
Making pieces from pieces
is a call to action rooted in urgent matter.
How do we make a future from fragments of the present?
How might objects give us a glimpse into survival, resilience, and rebuilding?
What might that mean for the Ukrainian future?
Perched on a window ledge, objects sit and ponder about their strength and becoming — burned wood that will not burn again, vegetable matter preserved and dehydrated. A handful of seeds. A fragile embroidered cloth. A smudge of charcoal.
Above them looms the Reaper.
Жнець (Reaper) is an obsolete taker. It knows that to burn is to eat and to grow is to burn. It is unnerving, like the precarious nature of our wealth and belonging. It asks - what will you give to stay where you are? What will you give to let me serve your tables and stories, knowing that your end haunts you? The black smoke haunts you. It creeping onto you haunts you.
And while the haunting creeps, the heroic fragments give us power. Pieces and pieces, although some scattered, some old, and some too new, give space to hope, to the diasporic, and to a possibility of togetherness in a time of separation.
Making pieces from pieces is resistance found in Ukrainian hands.
Sasha Shevchenko is a Ukrainian, Tkaronto/Toronto based multi-disciplinaryartist. Inspired by her experience as a Ukrainian immigrant, she bridgesinterests in sculpture, textile, archaeology, and ancestral knowledge . Bycombining contemporary and ancient story-telling methods, Shevchenko createssuggestive installations where tradition, resistance, and identity have thespace to whimsically extend into cultural futures.
Website: sasha-shevchenko.com
Instagram: @lyusterko
The Public Gallery (58 Lansdowne Ave.) is a 2m x 3.5 m street-facing gallery, featuring art that explores issues of social justice and anti-oppression. The Public believes that art should be accessible— created and enjoyed by everybody, — and inspire change. The gallery can be viewed anytime from Lansdowne Ave. at Seaforth in Toronto. Once selected, the Public Gallery is interested in mentoring and supporting the artist’s interest in developing community engagement via workshops or programming.