Scattered Bonds

Scattered Bonds examines fractures produced by war as a continuation of long-term violence against Ukrainian identity – through displacement, repression, and the systematic erosion of cultural continuity. Suspended from the ceiling, a fractured coral necklace – once a symbol of femininity, lineage, and Ukrainian tradition – hovers above a transparent platform. Its missing beads, scattered across the surface below, register absence as a physical condition.

Removed from its original function, the necklace operates as a material trace of severed family lines and interrupted inheritance. The work reflects not only the current mass displacement caused by Russia's full-scale invasion, but also earlier waves of forced migration, cultural suppression, and Soviet-era policies that fractured Ukrainian social and cultural structures.

Against the ongoing reality of civilian deaths, missing and illegally deported children, internal displacement, and exile, Scattered Bonds confronts loss as cumulative rather than singular. The work holds rupture as an ongoing process, questioning what can be preserved, transmitted, or repaired when the threads connecting people to place, lineage, and memory are repeatedly broken.