Kateryna Lysovenko
Vulnerability as Manifesto
In Vulnerability as Manifesto, Kateryna Lysovenko looks at the tender emergence of new life and the metamorphoses it endures. She challenges the idea that wartime art must solely focus on heroism or survival.
This Debut solo show of a prominent Ukrainian artist marked the launch of TBA, a new contemporary art gallery in Warsaw.
19/10–03/11 2024
TUE–SUN, 12–7 PM
Opening Reception
19/10, 12–7 PM
Al. Jerozolimskie 51/2
Warsaw, Poland
Curator
Oleksandra POGREBNYAK
Exhibition Architect
Tomasz Świetlik
Photo
Kuba Rodziewicz
Is it true that in times of war, all art must only revolve around life and death, balancing between the extremes of heroism, endurance, and the delicate line between survival and destruction? Ukrainian artist Kateryna Lysovenko boldly poses this question through her exhibition Vulnerability as Manifesto. She defies the expected wartime narratives and instead seeks to reclaim trust in a world fractured by tragedy and loss.
In her latest paintings, Lysovenko weaves her personal lore around the cycles of existence, revealing that birth and demise unfold together, entwined. Yet, amid this choreography of endings and beginnings, there are other forms of sensitivity: a realm of pleasure, longing, and the deep, instinctual desire to dissolve into the very fabric of life. The merging with the environment offers a new kind of materialization, one that extends the confines of the human body. Lysovenko advances this rhetorical search by shifting the focus beyond living beings. She extends subjectivity and the right to pleasure to the sea, trees, and other material forms of the natural world.
This reimagining echoes folk tales, where transformation into a tree or a mermaid was not an act of dehumanization but a profound gesture of resistance against structural violence, a search for belonging in an impossible world. These new bodily forms dwell in utopian spaces where one is protected from the forces of fate and historical trauma. While the memory of those no longer among the living is preserved in archetypal visions, hope still flickers. From flesh and blood, children are born into our world of violence. Their arrival holds the power to dismantle the forces that seek to suppress life. An act of birth becomes a gentle promise of renewal and enduring presence.
For Lysovenko, this manifesto serves as a powerful tool for reclaiming avant-garde traditions and rediscovering one’s path towards the future. It is an invitation to feel, to be guided by sensation rather than rationalization.
– Oleksandra Pogrebnyak
Kateryna Lysovenko
A man steals his body from war, 2024
Oil on canvas
130 × 108 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Embassy of the future, 2024
Oil on canvas
50 × 50 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
4 ways to feel a kiss, 2024
Watercolor on paper
40 × 30 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
4 ways to feel a kiss, 2024
Watercolor on paper
40 × 30 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
4 ways to feel a kiss, 2024
Watercolor on paper
30 × 40 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
4 ways to feel a kiss, 2024
Watercolor on paper
40 × 30 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Dream about saved lives, 2024
Oil on canvas
103 × 108 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Her first lover was the sea, 2024
Oil on canvas
109 × 117 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Second birth, 2024
Oil on canvas
158 × 184 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Touch the sea, 2024
Oil on canvas
115 × 158 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Propaganda of the fragile living world, 2024
Oil on canvas
168 × 173 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Giving birth, 2024
Oil on canvas
50 × 53 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
One more mermaid, 2024
Oil on canvas
100 × 143 cm
Kateryna Lysovenko
Couple, 2024
Oil on canvas
122 × 137 cm
Born 1989 in Odesa, Ukraine, currently lives in Vienna. She studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv from 2013 to 2018. Kateryna primarily works with monumental painting, drawing, and text, often referencing mythological themes to reflect on past and present human tragedies. Body, materiality, and motherhood are important motifs in her art.
Kateryna has recently exhibited at the Biennale Matter of Art (2024) in Prague and at From Ukraine: Dare to Dream, a collateral event of the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). Her art is part of several major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Ukrainian Museum of Contemporary Art in Kyiv, and the Neue Galerie in Graz, as well as private collections around the world.
Born in 1992, Kyiv, Ukraine, a curator at the PinchukArtCentre. Oleksandra is drawn to working with the current and next generations of artists from Ukraine and around the world, addressing shared historical and political realities. Her recent projects were presented in Ukraine, Poland, and Italy, where the exhibition she curated was part of the official collateral program of the 60th Venice Biennale.