the Ukrainian-American artist amassing pysanky for Ukraine’s post-war rebirth

Like many individuals of Ukrainian heritage residing abroad, the New York-based artist Sofika Zielyk was shocked when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February and uncertain the place to direct her energies. Then she hatched a plan.

“I went by way of the phases of grief,” Zielyk says of the battle’s early days. “To start with it was simply shock and disbelief, then disappointment—the type of disappointment that really harm—after which rage. And through that rage I needed to do one thing. In need of taking a bazooka and going to Kyiv, which I can’t do, I wanted to do one thing. Then I realised that the egg is my weapon.”

Zielyk is a particularly achieved creator of pysanky, eggs with ornately batiked shells which might be a type of Ukrainian folks artwork that has been practised (historically solely by girls) for hundreds of years. Although primarily related to Easter now, pysanky have many older pagan makes use of as tokens of excellent fortune, regeneration and safety from evil.

“There may be an outdated, outdated legend that claims that so long as persons are creating pysanky, the world will live on,” Zielyk says. “It says that there’s an evil monster chained up within the hills within the Carpathian Mountains, and he’s the personification of evil. Annually, he sends spies to see if persons are nonetheless making the eggs, and if they’re, the spies return and tighten the monster’s chains. But when persons are not carrying on this custom, the spies by no means come again, the chain turn into looser and looser, the monster will get free and will probably be the tip of the world.”

Recognising how poignant pysanky are to Ukraine’s present battle for survival, the artist launched a communal undertaking to make and collect as lots of the eggs as potential.

“I put out the phrase on social media for everyone who needs to—whether or not they’re of Ukrainian background or not, whether or not they’re 5 or 100, whether or not they’re Picasso or not— to ship of their historically designed egg,” she says. Since then, she has acquired eggs from throughout North America and across the globe. “It’s taken on a lifetime of its personal. And for me, I can’t do a lot else—I’m going to demonstrations, I acquire humanitarian help—however that is one thing that makes me really feel related to my household there. I really feel related with my ancestral homeland.”

Because the crowd-sourced pysanky began rolling in, Zielyk partnered with the Ukrainian Institute of America on the Higher East Facet of Manhattan and the World Federation of Ukrainian Ladies’s Organisations (WFUWO), of which she is a cultural officer. The previous is internet hosting an ever-growing exhibition of the pysanky that individuals drop off or mail in that, except the battle ends sooner, will stay on view till 24 August, Ukraine’s Independence Day.

“Because the show grows and grows and grows, we all know that we’re nonetheless in bother, and but, on the identical time, there’s this actually intense, visceral type of symbolism behind this that conveys or tasks a magic—these eggs are a robust factor,” Andrew Horodysky, an advisor for artwork programming on the institute, asys. “That basically harks again to pre-Christianity. It’s this ritual that’s been handed alongside generations after generations after generations. And that magic has by no means subsided.”

After the battle, WFUWO will work with girls’s organisations in Ukraine to ship pysanky to communities there, the place they’ll fulfil their conventional features nearly as good omens to advertise restoration and rebirth because the nation undertakes what might be a protracted and troublesome reconstruction course of.

“They don’t seem to be meant to be saved, they have been used nearly as good luck charms,” Zielyk says. “They have been put in cattle feed so the cattle could be stronger, they might be buried in gardens so the harvest could be higher, the place the home was being constructed pysanky have been placed on every nook so the home could be freed from evil spirits and so forth. So these eggs will return to Ukraine and symbolically assist with the rebirth.”

• The Pysanka: A Image of Hope, till 24 August, Ukrainian Institute of America, New York.