Authors' statement:

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During the war, the sense of beauty can disappear. For a person of art, this means that a person itself is disappearing, dissolves in news and troubling thoughts. A person of art becomes either an invisible person or a mouthpiece of pain. In the first case, you do nothing, in the second case, you make posters about the tragedy of war.

 

In the first month of the war, every evening we went to watch the sunset over the estuary. It was in a village near Kherson, where we went, so we would not get stuck in the occupation. We visited our friends on the other side of the village to use the Internet to read the news (because there was no Internet in our house). We were looking for food in the village (because in the early days, people scooped up everything from the shops, and there was no new delivery). So, we went outside to find out where something was exploding, and it was exploding everywhere - Kherson, Mykolaiv, Chornobayivka, and we were stuck somewhere in the middle. We heated water and made heaters from plastic bottles, because it was winter and the electricity was out. We did what was necessary for survival, but every evening we continued to go to the estuary. The sunset lasted for a few minutes, and we ran along the Stanislav hills so we could have time to breathe in some of its beauty.

 

When the invaders came very close to our village, we were lucky enough to leave for Odesa. In Odesa, we went to a supermarket. And it was a thing of beauty. Many Ukrainians described a similar feeling – witnessing the shelves full of everything!

 

Ternopil. The first flowers I suddenly wanted to buy a year after the full-scale invasion. Sunflowers. It was the first bouquet that I wanted to photograph. And then there was the Apple Feast of the Savior with its dozens (or maybe hundreds) of women and grannies who were making interesting and complex compositions from various herbs and fruits.

 

The market in Ternopil became a place for researching local flora (edible and not so much) and local history - the "flea market" here is just gorgeous. Sellers already knew we bought weird junk. They thought

 we were weirdos, but they still smiled and greeted us. Others, but wonderful people nonetheless. Other, but still wonderful traditions. Other, but beautiful plants and things. Another life, which is not else's life. Searching for local artifacts and assembling them into bouquets first became our way of exploring and accepting a new environment, and later turned into a full-fledged art therapy. Sometimes it seems that it was not us who discovered it, but it discovered a new us. Because we, as contemporary artists, who are ourselves are all so very contemporary, would never have thought of making bouquets before.

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