Svitlana Ratoshniuk b. 1972
Svitlana Ratoshnyuk was born in 1972, lives and works in Kyiv. She graduated from the Graphic Design Department of the Kyiv Art and Industrial College in 1993. Her practice spans textile, embroidery, sculpture, and installation, combining traditional techniques with a contemporary artistic context.
In her work, the artist explores the act of observation, the fragility and memorialization of beauty, and the transformation of traditional ornament as a language for processing personal and collective trauma, particularly the experience of war. Through textile and imagery drawn from folk culture, she weaves together memory, irony, and a form of resistance.
She has participated in group exhibitions at the Kosyi Kaponir Museum (Kyiv, 1994), the International Contemporary Art Symposium Biruchiy in Poland (2016) and Zaporizhzhia (2021), as well as in the projects Art War, Biruchiy — Transcarpathia 022, Art Armor (2022), and Records of Resistance (Germany). She is the co-author of the project Sorry (Burning Man, 2018). In 2021, her solo exhibition Tears of Guadalupe took place at the Zhovid Art Residency.
