Making pieces from pieces is an installation project that uses objects as metaphors for fading memories, places of belonging, and the never-ending task of staying resilient in difficult times. Assembling objects and materials is a useful strategy to help us envision and create crucial stories and traditions from very little.
As a person of Ukrainian diaspora, Shevchenko is motivated to invent spaces and projects where traditions can evolve and survive beyond the damaging, scattering and permanent events of migration. More-so, she looks to how it can be a source of play and imagination that goes beyond the rigidity of cultural stereotypes and boxes.
Making pieces from pieces is an urgent skill - a call to do with what we have - because what we have often holds meaning deeply rooted in centuries of human life.
Perched on a window ledge, objects sit and ponder about their past and future, their survival and their destruction - burned wood that will not burn again, clementines and leaves preserved and dehydrated… A handful of seeds… A fragile embroidered cloth… A smudge of charcoal… A fingerprint.
Pieces and pieces are at some point bound to make a story, an origin point, or a place on the map. This points to a possibility, to hope, to a sense of togetherness in a time of separation. To make from pieces is resistance found in Ukrainian hands.
