Kateryna Aliinyk
Kateryna Aliinyk, was born in 1998 in Luhansk, Ukraine. In 2016, moved to Kyiv, where she entered the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. In 2021 received a master's degree in painting. In 2020, she took a contemporary art course at KAMA (Kyiv Academy of Media Art) and completed a study program “Positions of the Artist” within the contemporary art course by Method Fund. Her main mediums are painting and text. She works mostly with subjects of war and occupation of Donbas through images of nature and non-anthropocentric optics.
THE JOY OF THE POSTPONED DEATH!
2025
oil paint on canvas
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Visual Culture Research Center, and RIBBON International for the Kyiv Biennial 2025
In her work Kateryna Aliinyk explores the nature of violence not through direct depiction, but through the disruption of the usual order of things, emphasizing how the everyday can become a source of deep horror. This is a metaphor for how war distorts not only the external world, but also internal perception, forcing people to feel like animals stuck in a cycle of fear and brief moments of relief. When a rocket flies by, there is palpable relief and a special, vivid joy at the cancellation of death. This daily and seasonal cycle repeats itself over and over again, and the longer and more often a person remains in these extremes, the more difficult it is for them to think about nuanced contexts.
WHAT THE HEROINE WANTS IS THE MAIN QUESTION
2023
Acrylic on glued paper
The work is part of the We Got Front-Row Tickets series, in which the theme of the absence of the human figure in landscapes is further developed. At the time of its creation, the artist was unable to have direct contact with Ukrainian land, however, distance can also be fruitful for critical reflection. We observe the war-affected landscape and the war itself from different distances. The landscape simultaneously serves as the backdrop for our actions, the actions themselves, and the protagonists. Now, with the complete impossibility of setting foot on these lands, all that remains is to closely observe the slow and brutal unfolding of a plot in which we no longer play a part.
For this series, Kateryna Aliinyk used thin, old, glued paper, which is fragile and temporary. This contrasts with the thick canvas, representing artists’ previous stronger relationship with the Ukrainian terrain.