A multidisciplinary artist working with material and spatial practices informed by war, displacement, and lived experience. Yuliia's practice explores how matter, memory, and responsibility converge through objects and structures shaped by rupture – asking how what has been broken might still participate in building futures.

Yuliia Holovatiuk-Ungureanu at work in her studio
Yuliia Holovatiuk-Ungureanu working on a ceramic installation piece

Artist Statement

I work through intersections rather than fixed categories. I am interested in how forms, materials, and processes meet, overlap, and transform one another over time – how a sculptural gesture can carry archival language, how a spatial structure can hold emotional weight, and how duration itself can become a material through which meaning is formed.

My practice takes shape in moments where pressure changes form, fragility gains resistance, and silence becomes active rather than empty. I am drawn to how material holds unresolved histories – historical, emotional, and political – and how meaning emerges through labour, repetition, erosion, and physical endurance rather than direct representation.

Working with clay, natural pigments, artefacts, and archival materials, I create situations where memory becomes spatial and tactile. Repetition and restraint allow tension to settle, opening space for balance and redefinding the inner self which then becomes your new fundament for rebuilding and regeneration.

For me, this practice is an ongoing process of becoming, shaped through material intimacy, embodied care, and sustained attention. It involves staying with what remains unresolved rather than turning away from it – allowing continuity, responsibility, and the possibility of rebuilding to emerge over time, in relation to others and to future generations.