Series of oil paintings. 100x80 each, 2022

White Spots exhibition is a deeply personal attempt to gather myself—and perhaps others—in the wake of our shared tragedy during the early months of the full-scale invasion. It was never my intention to exhibit these works. They began as private reflections, painted in solitude. But somehow, they found their way into the light. 

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 The paintings capture fleeting moments from the lives of Ukrainians—scenes that have become part of our new, harrowing everyday reality. Yet these moments rarely make it into headlines. They are the “white spots” in our collective memory, the silences in the noise. And I believe each of us carries stories like these, waiting to be told, endlessly unfolding. Among the works are two square canvases—self-portraits. One is titled Refugee. It’s vibrant, chaotic. The background is inspired by Natalya Serhiyevna, a homeless woman who lived in my Kyiv block. She was lucid in conversation, except for her belief that she was a theater and film actress from Buenos Aires. Her clothes and bags were adorned with handmade flowers and bows crafted from colorful plastic. When I arrived in Cyprus, displaced and burdened with bags, I saw myself in her—this eccentric woman telling everyone she’s an artist. And I realized: I am her. The second self-portrait is darker. It embodies the raw, corrosive hatred I felt toward the enemy—a feeling so intense it threatened to unravel my own humanity. That canvas asks a question I still wrestle with: How do we remain human in the face of madness? The war is relentless. Every moment, it unfolds in tragedy, heroism, and quiet survival. Stories that only a few witness—and those few are the nation itself. A young man, barely grown, caught in the battle for Gostomel. His mother, hiding in a basement in Bucha, or held captive, or haunted forever by the sound of enemy boots. Survivors nursing invisible wounds. The scale of it all is morally overwhelming. It makes you feel small. But that’s an illusion. You may have felt the tension among Ukrainians—toward those who left, those who seem indifferent, those consumed by their own lives. These are the so-called “wrong” people. But when we move from the abstract to the personal—from categories to faces—we rediscover humanity. Everyone has the right to despair, to rage. What matters is that we stay connected. That we choose compassion. That we become drops forming a mighty ocean. Because our greatest freedom lies in how we respond.