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The Tree of Life
Kyiv, Ukraine, 2024
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yaroslava’s family made the decision to evacuate and leave Kyiv. Due to a number of external and internal circumstances, they were absent from their apartment for more than a year. During this time, without care, all of the artist’s beloved plants—both at home and in the studio—gradually died.
When the artist eventually returned to Kyiv and re-established her residence there, she found herself unable to throw away the dried branches left in the pots. Instead, she began to “revive” them artificially, decorating them with her childhood hair clips—an act reminiscent of the ceremonial adornment of graves with artificial flowers.
Over time, this gesture of symbolic revival became part of Yaroslava’s artistic practice. The reconstructed plant— A Tree of Life —continues to appear in different projects, transforming a personal experience of loss into a recurring artistic motif.
Plantage Dok, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 2025
Within the framework of the solo exhibition WHAT’S NEXT?, presented as the result of a three-month residency at Plantage Dok, the “Tree of Life” takes on more theatrical forms, transforming the space of the former church hall into a new post-apocalyptic church.
The viewer becomes a witness to branches sprouting from petrified remnants of clothing—epoxy “vases”—and crowned with extraordinarily vibrant, almost unrealistically saturated flowers. For this installation, the artist searched for artificial flowers both in Kyiv and at the Amsterdam flea market during the celebrations of King’s Day, in addition to using pieces from her childhood collection.
This festivity—both exuberant and slightly surreal—became an important symbolic reference for the work, reflecting the emotional displacements produced by post-traumatic stress, where the mind overlays vivid new sensations onto the lifeless contexts of a previous life.
A vase with flowers 1
100 x 130 x 50 cm
upcycled textile, exopy resin, plastic hair clips, wood
A vase with flowers 2
100 x 90 x 50 cm
upcycled textile, exopy resin, plastic hair clips, wood
Zavadski, Vienna, Austria, 2026
A Tree of Vienna Life is a kind of unpublished work—something close to a one-minute sculpture. The idea of creating a Tree of Life originally emerged within the framework of the exhibition The Inner Crossroads. However, due to spatial limitations, the tree had to be “cut down”—much like in a garden when everything begins to grow beyond its boundaries.
Yet the Tree of Life, as an act, a phenomenon, and an event, remains profoundly important. It emerged during a deeply painful and long-awaited personal transformation I experienced in Vienna, one that ultimately unfolded into the exhibition as a form of confession.
In this sense, the tree becomes a kind of self-portrait: a gesture of transforming a lifeless branch into a flowering revival.
The Tree of Vienna Life
190 x 180 x 50 cm
plastic hair clips, wood
© XOMEHKO 2026
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