THE MORPHING PROJECT - Lesia Synychenko

The Morphing project

by Lesia Synychenko

08.09 - 05.10.2023

Opening event 07.09.2023 at 17:00

Avoin Tila, Venetsia-Talo/Lapinlahden Lähde

Opening hours Mon-Fri 10:00-16:00, Sat-Sun by appointment.

The exhibition by Ukrainian artist Lesia Synychenko is titled “Morphing”. The word "morphing" comes from the word metamorphosis, which is a Greek word meaning "a transformation." In films and advertising, morphing is a special effect that creates the appearance of a smooth transition and flow between objects and scenes. In this context, the exhibition is born of Synychenko necessity to communicate her “morphing” process. She is totally aware that those internal, barely noticeable changes, which are happening to her, are indelible and irreversible. In the end, she might feel dissolving into a running, flowing anima able to pour itself into other entity impossible to predict yet.

Morphing is also a project about war, home and faith. It deals with the conflictive situation of women today. Synychenko tells the story of a woman struggling to find herself in a world where basic safety rules do not apply. She is looking for an unknown and invisible personal "something" with which a person can resist during a war, a quest for hope in the middle of a personal devastating grief due to the suffering of her homeland and her compatriots.

The artists’s artworks depicts the atrocities of living in a war-torn world, certainly, she tries to make sense of her struggle for survival. The exhibition is divided into two parts, consisting of graphic works supplemented with extended diary entries and artists’ poems. The first part is called Praesensio (Premonition). It was created on the eve of full-scale Russia's ruthless invasion of Ukraine and is filled with symbolism and unconscious forebodings of the future. This part includes such works as "The main thing is to have time to say I am at home", "In dark times, hope is a tiny cat" and "When hope disappears, faith remains".

The second part of the project is called Cogitatio (Reflection). The works were created in Lithuania, where the artist spent the last year as a temporary war refugee. This part consists of such works as “Every woman is a doll for someone's empty eyes", "500 kilograms of despair at my windows in Chernihiv" and “A live target is a temporary concept”. Above all, the exhibition Morphing hopes to offer a sense of serene contemplation, and an opportunity to conceive art as a flow for emotions, and meditation to contrast with the despicable damages of war and unprecedented terror.