ROOTS explores how a place of living is preserved in personal memory, language, objects, and everyday experience.

Concept

The project brings together two series of works that form a cohesive narrative about memory, loss, and the internal presence of home. The collage series What I Took With Me reflects on Kharkiv on the eve of the full-scale invasion and during its first days.

It functions as a collective diary of the city, composed of fragments of anxiety and everyday life that suddenly became history. The works incorporate quotes from real people’s social media posts—voices in which viewers may recognize familiar tones, or even their own words. Some of these voices have since fallen silent forever.

The installation series The Trees of My Garden Have Grown Inside Me develops the theme of an internal connection to place. Memory appears here as a living structure that continues to grow and shape a person’s inner landscape. Through images of bodies sprouting roots, the project reflects on the experience of forced displacement—a condition in which home ceases to be a geography, yet does not disappear.

Nadiia Velychko is a multidisciplinary artist from Kharkiv, born in Donbas. Until 2022, her practice focused primarily on book design and work with cultural projects. Following the full-scale invasion, she began an active artistic practice, addressing themes of memory, war, and identity. Over the past five years, her work has been presented in international exhibitions across Europe and the United States.

Curated by Ulyana Krucha