Trofymenko Olesia
The war taught us to live “today”. We are in that state of awareness of reality, when the perception of the moment is as acute as possible. It is strange to plan your “tomorrow” when you are not completely sure of what will happen in the next hour. Memory does not record events, but states. Subjective feelings of the moment, sometimes separated from the image.
This loss of a sense of control over one’s own life, even if somewhat illusory, initially caused a state of despair and depression. Eventually you learn to live with this new “vision”. The existing reality is so different from the previous, “peaceful” one that all memories from life before the war seem unreal, insignificant, lose their sentimental meaning. Sometimes even annoying.
Each of us has an archive of our own photos and videos, collected over decades. If you look in there, sometimes you get the impression that you are watching some other, unfamiliar person. As if the previous life was a dream from which I had to wake up. The painting “Reboot” is the second in a series of works about the past erased by the war.
Ukrainian artist Olesia Trofymenko was born in 1982 in Vilcha, studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, where she lives and works now. Maria Grazia Chiuri invited Trofymenko to create scenography for the show of Dior’s new couture collection after seeing one of the artist’s works, which combines painting and embroidery.
Olesia Trofymenko’s work intertwines elements and memories of Ukrainian traditions in an intimate, very personal interpretation. For Dior, she created an iconographic project called The Flow, where the “tree of life” is combined with floral ensembles. These traditional motifs symbolise femininity, the idea of continuity and a bright future.
She was born in 1982 in Vilcha. She graduated from the Taras Shevchenko State Art High School (1993-2000) and the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Monumental Painting Workshop under the guidance of Mykola Storozhenko (2001-2007).
She works in the field of cinema as a production designer and has participated in many group art exhibitions. She lives in Kyiv.
To present its Haute Couture Autumn-Winter 2022-2023 collection, the world-famous Dior brand used the works of Olesia Trofymenko at Paris Fashion Week. For three months, Trofymenko worked on the Flow project, consisting of 32 embroidered canvases that decorated the setting of the Dior show.
She is an art director for the TV series Serfs and several films.