On The Edge

Through translation between verbal and visual languages, gesture, material, sound, and narrative are activated as interdependent elements within Barvynka’s practice. In Voice of the Sculpture, sound art unfolds as a collaboration between the artist and her sculpture-as-musical-instrument, Fragmented Stories, a modular sculptural structure composed of industrial and architectural elements that exist without fixed utility.

Through translation between verbal and visual languages, gesture, material, sound, and narrative are activated as interdependent elements within Barvynka’s practice. In Voice of the Sculpture, sound art unfolds as a collaboration between the artist and her sculpture-as-musical-instrument, Fragmented Stories, a modular sculptural structure composed of industrial and architectural elements that exist without fixed utility. 

If in Barvynka’s sculptures, concrete, metal, and glass speak through human resilience, in Holovatiuk-Ungureanu’s Where Rights End, legal documents and language function as material subjected to physical pressure, exposing the fragility of social systems and the collapse of guarantees once assumed to secure peace and safety. In Unstated Objectives, as well as in the video work The Grammar of Violence, text operates as form across different surfaces, exploring the instability of systems once assumed to provide continuity: social and political bonds, legal frameworks, and international commitments made in the name of securing peace and order.

Reflecting on her practice, Holovatiuk-Ungureanu comments: “I am interested in the theme of rebirth. I feel responsible for restoring the truth and rebuilding the future.”

Found objects become metaphors suspended in space, speaking through their hidden poetry. In Yuliia`s kinetic sculpture, The Word That Changed Meaning, material, movement, and time allow language to surface through physical consequence. This emergence of language continues in textual works such as Self Portrait by Barvynka and The Work of Continuity by Holovatiuk-Ungureanu, where words function as voice, gesture, and presence rather than narration.  That voice then detaches from the body, passing into sound through Olha`s Voice of the Sculpture, and is further translated into her abstract imagery in Escape.

Where We Begin is a time-based, site-responsive installation that combines photographic wallpaper depicting damaged residential spaces in Ukraine, found objects recovered from destroyed homes, and ceramic bricks. The work brings together material tension and spatial confrontation, in which domestic traces, architectural forms, modular structures, and fractured surfaces collide.

Testing the medium and its limits is central to Becoming The Self, a large-scale, modular ceramic-brick installation that bears cracks, text, and mark-making. Several elements were fired beyond standard limits to withstand excess pressure, remaining intact despite visible deformation. Cracks function as material records of stress rather than failure, while embedded language acts as internal support, holding memory and formation within the structure. Juxtapositions of fragile substances and industrial elements similarly appear across Barvynka’s sculptural, photographic, painterly, and sound works, where matter resonates as an independent agent.

Modularity in the sculptural and painterly works of both artists balances childlike playfulness and humour with moments of desperation and adaptation. Within this tension, Rebirth by Holovatiuk-Ungureanu and Emergence by Barvynka operate as sites of transformation. 

On the Edge resists closure and invites the viewer to explore questions such as: Where is the boundary between sculpture and painting, painting and text, text and sound, sound and performance, meaning and form, truth and speculation? What remains hidden between these shifting states? How are art practices transformed under contemporary conditions marked by hybrid conflict, disinformation, and the manipulation of historical reality?