Katya Lesiv

Ukrainian. Photographies X BredaPhoto: Altered sites in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine

You can spend a night in the Villa was a phrase used when proposing an overnight stay between my flight and a train journey when I arrived in Finland with my daughter Rada in May 2022. That was the first night we spent at the villa, our first night in Finland. The images were taken during the various stays in the Villa during weeks of in-betweenness. The Villa, as a special context, observes, refreshes, and purifies every aspect of routine in mind, day and relationship.

I am going home to eat mulberries from the tree is a gentle manifesto that refers to the act of eating berries from either a tree or a bush as one of Lesiv’s deepest attachments since earliest childhood, which became brighter during the period of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In times of losing the sense of basic security, the confidence of a new quality arises, a feeling bordering on total trust/surrender/immersion, which allows you to be sensitive to the elemental space. A state where the difference between intention and decision becomes clear. Planning and decision-making are painful to contemplate without irony, while the intention tastes like tranquillity, gaining the same life force as the sensory experience that forms the body.