Katya Lesiv

Each winter, I think: it’s impossible that the trees will bear leaves, flowers, fruit. Fruit is fantasy, utopia, impossibility. For half of each year, bare stakes stand in the cold. You cannot surprise me; I know spring will come. Yet still, how unexpected that it arrives. Where is the place of memory that survives winter, that laughs at death? I am the place of memory—of safety, of sun, of pleasure. I am intention’s moving object. The intention is to return to such a place again and again. “I am going home to eat mulberries from the tree” is a poetic manifesto of intention. It begins with a simple act—eating berries from a tree or a bush in a home garden. A warm body becomes the vessel of this intention. It acknowledges it, gives it attention, and moves toward it. Even when the intended point cannot be reached—because of seasons, deaths, births, or wars—the intention remains in the body as warmth: patient, quiet, and focused. The project weaves sensory recollection, mythic language, and bodily gestures to explore the space between intention and decision, ritual and everyday life. The mulberry becomes both symbol and companion, embodying two archetypes: Morus mater—the motherberry, wide and milky; and Morus moros—the deathberry, slipping from one’s fingers. Their names stretch across breath and vowels, pronounced as if pressed to the chest, whispered rather than spoken. Rooted in the experience of war and displacement, the work turns toward intimate gestures and cyclical time as a means of survival. When the external world collapses into uncertainty, the act of returning—to the tree, to the mother, to the body—becomes a quiet resistance. Through photography, installation, and performative practices, the project reflects on sensual and spiritual continuity, on the body as a flexible monument—one that matures, remembers, and remains connected.

Rada is the name of my daughter. Rada in Ukrainian means “happy” “satisfied”. A photographic series “I am. Rada” is a way of witnessing presence, body, state. Starting from my pregnancy I’ve felt an intuitive, physical need for documenting the present state at a certain point in time. The distance created by the act of photography has also given a stable feeling of I AM, relief.

Rada is the name of my daughter. Rada in Ukrainian means “happy” “satisfied”. A photographic series “I am. Rada” is a way of witnessing presence, body, state. Starting from my pregnancy I’ve felt an intuitive, physical need for documenting the present state at a certain point in time. The distance created by the act of photography has also given a stable feeling of I AM, relief.