• University Certificate in Drawing & Visual Investigation

Pivot

Katia Lysionak

Katia Lysionak’s recent work focuses on the pivotal point where an old belief is replaced with a new understanding: the recent Belarus protests of 2020 and the re-birth of “a new Belarus”.
The work is based on self-imagery and body shapes – a screaming face and a child pose – that seek to convey a moment of transformation. Lysionak’s images merge the bodily experience with the meaning of work; the trauma of being born into the new era.
She uses traditional and non-traditional raw materials in her collages, including the fragments of protest materials, old posters, old artwork created around the time of the protests, as well as fresh meat and wire. In exploring the relationships between these materials, Lysionak experiments with finding new ways to communicate ideas and feelings about the self-transformation process.
The project is fuelled by her personal engagement with, and activism in, the Belarus protests. Family divides, friend’s arrests, sleepless nights, torture reports, late night calls from KGB; they all shape this lived experience that cannot be unseen or unheard. This irrevocable knowledge and the change it has triggered is part of investigating the birth of new Belarus.