Natalia Tykhoniuk

I was born in a city that no longer exists as it was. Mariupol — once sea and sand, now ash and absence. Yet even what disappears leaves its trace. That trace is what I follow.
I live now in Zurich, but my hands still carry the earth of elsewhere. I grind straw, soil, bark, ash into matter that resists beauty. These are not materials chosen—they are what remains.
I am close to Arte Povera, because in the poverty of matter lies genius: the truth that nothing is too small to hold memory. I am close to wabi-sabi, because time itself writes through imperfection, through cracks, through silence.
My vessels and wall pieces are not objects. They are witnesses. Companions of dust and silence. Fragile, yet enduring. They stay when all else is gone.