POLINA RAIKO:
INVISIBLE
A UNIQUE BOOK AND EVEN MORE
INSIDE THE BOOK
29
CHAPTERS
268
178
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGES
Polina Raiko's artistic heritage became widely known in Ukraine and around the world after her house was flooded and her paintings destroyed as a result of the Russians' blowing up the Kakhovka HPP dam.
BIOGRAPHY
Polina Raiko was born in 1928 in the city of Oleshky, Kherson Region. There were four daughters in her family. Her father died when the children were little. The family lived in poverty and children worked hard from an early age. Polina lived in Oleshky for all of her life. Her painting began when her beloved daughter Olena died in a car accident, her husband died, and her son was imprisoned. Drawing became a cure for her loneliness...
74 NYZHNIA STREET
The atmosphere of the town of Oleshky (Kherson region, Ukraine), the street and its environment where Polina Raiko lived.
BETWEEN А DOVE OF PEACE AND А BLACK RAVEN: HER WAY TO PARADISE
Three versions of Polina Raiko's first drawing: a dove of peace on a gate, a black raven over a stove, and an inscription on a garage door.
“DRAW A SHIP, POLINA SOLDATOVA!”
Among all types of transport, Polina Raiko painted only ships. These images have a story, connected with Polina's childhood. The ship was her first and only drawing, for which she was praised in the school.
SECRET SELF-TEACHING
Polina Raiko never showed her sketches. In this book, you will see them for the first time! She learnt to draw secretly by herself, using the cheapest notebooks.
FOUR SISTERS
On the wall in the living room, Polina Raiko painted four women. They are sitting on the moons among flowers and angels like in the Garden of Eden, holding lush bouquets, and they have wings themselves. This is Polina and her three sisters.
GOLDEN CHURCH
Usually Polina Raiko painted with the cheapest paint – enamel, but she painted the image of the church in the living room with special “gold” paint. This image looks like “ceremonial” and very complex, and Polina was very proud of it.
TWO STARS
There are two pictures with red stars in the living room. On one, we see a woman in a military uniform, whom Polina Rayko called a “captainess”. The second image with a red star shows an angel with two children. This image has a prototype – a postcard on which the star above the angel is white.
JESUS AND MARY
Jesus and the Mother of God in the living room is Polina Raiko's personal iconostasis. In the image of the Mother of God, which seems universal to us, Polina Raiko saw the face of her daughter who died in a car accident, and in the child, she saw her grandson, who survived.
LOCAL CHURCH: INVISIBLE LOGIC
Polina Raiko painted the local church of Oleshky, where she was a parishioner, on the wall of her summer kitchen. This depiction of the church has its own logic, invisible and personalised, but its understanding brings us closer to Polina Raiko's feelings.
THE WHITE PEAHEN
Символіка павича, як і півня, належить ще до язичницької старовини.
The symbolism of the peacock, like that of the rooster, dates back to pagan antiquity. There are two pairs of peacocks among the paintings of the house, where the peahen is white. For Polina Raiko, the white peacock probably looked like a bride in a wedding dress.
WEDDING BEHIND THE BED
The wedding is painted under a window. During Polina Raiko's lifetime, there was a bed under this window, and the painting was hidden behind it. It seems that Polina Raiko hid this drawing from both her guests and herself…
HER HUSBAND IN THE AFTERLIFE
Polina Raiko painted her husband after his death in his bedroom. This image is very different from the others. Faced this posthumous image, ancient, pre-Christian rituals cannot but be recalled.
Husband and son of Polina Raiko were buried in the local cemetery in Oleshky. She decorated their graves with paintings, trying to share with them even after their deaths her art, which she considered to be a gift from God.
LOVE
Despite her unhappy life with her husband, the house she painted is about love. The porch is greeted by a pair of swans touching their beaks as if kissing.
ADULTERY
Next room to the bedroom, the pictures of the hoopoes hides the story of adultery. The artist endowed these birds with human features and behaviour – there is a man, a woman, children and... a mistress.
HER TRINITY: BIRDS, FLOWERS, ANGELS
The need to get rid of emptiness was manifested not only in large drawings, but also in a very dense filling of space: flowers immediately appeared in every free piece of wall or surface. The closer to the “sky”, the more angels became like flock of birds.
OH MOUNTAIN, MOUNTAIN
The Ukrainian folk song “Oh there on the mountain, oh there on the steep” has been recorded by folklore researchers almost all over Ukraine. The fact that Polina Raiko, a poorly educated woman, knew and painted this song in the same row with the most important symbols and stories of her life is an extremely powerful and vivid marker of Ukrainian identity and deep Ukrainian roots of her work
REED BEDS
The Dnipro floodplains are unique natural landscape. The reed beds began right behind Polina Raiko's vegetable garden. Polina Raiko literally dedicated to the floodplains the room, where the image of her husband in the afterlife is located.
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
Where could Polina Raiko get her inspiration and images? From her memories, from the nature around her, from a postcard she brought from church – that's pretty much her entire “library of images”. However, the uniqueness of Polina Raiko as an artist is that she “appropriated” and “digested” the images she saw by chance, and in her imagination, they began to take on a life of their own.
INVISIBLE THREAT
Not all the creatures in Polina Raiko's pantheon are kind and friendly. If leopards are guardians like sphinxes, the snake is the personification of a threat, and the black raven symbolizes an evil fate that takes away a child.
MERMAIDS
We find echoes of ancient beliefs rooted in Ukrainian paganism not only in Polina Raiko's notebooks, which are full of quite poetic folk spells against diseases, enemies and all kinds of troubles. The most striking evidence of the connection with the ancestral beliefs is the images of mermaids.
CEILINGS
The ceilings of the house are impressive. Grandma Polina, who was over 70 years old at that time, would stand on a table singing church and folk songs while painting her ceilings during long winter evenings. She considered the real miracle that her body never ached with such hard working and always said cheerfully and proudly: “I stand, sing, paint – and nothing hurts!”.
THE ROAD TO PARADISE
Polina Raiko passed away easily, imperceptibly, as she saw it herself: in one of the walls of the house, she had painted the Road to Paradise. At the foot of it, you can't even immediately see the coffin from which this simple, joyful and blooming road begins.
SELF-PORTRAIT ON THE BACK OF A MIRROR
One of last pictures created by Polina Raiko, which was found after her death, is a self-portrait painted on the back of a mirror. In the portrait, Polina is young and beautiful.
Did Polina Raiko put any special meaning in this last? We will never know, and this is good, because not all the secrets and riddles of Polina Raiko's universe have to be solved.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Polina Raiko's house is a unique object of cultural heritage: during the last 6 years of her life (1998-2004), a simple village woman turned it into a one-piece installation. All walls, ceilings, doors, wickets, and gates were covered with paintings. The value of Polina Raiko's art was confirmed by many Ukrainian researchers. Her art is a vivid marker of the Ukrainian identity of the Kherson region, or rather, the Ukrainian soul of the south.
In 2005 NGO Centre for Cultural Development "Totem" published the catalogue of Polina Raiko's artworks "The Way to Paradise", which until 2024 was the main source of information about the unique artist.
Today, despite Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine and the destruction of the paintings in Polina Rayko's house as a result of the Russian occupiers' blowing up the Kakhovka HPP dam, we are presenting a new book.
The book is supplemented with new research, an archive of Polina Raiko's drawings that was rescued by “Totem”, photographs of people who visited Polina Raiko's house.
Also, using modern technologies, the book gives the opportunity to see and hear Polina Raiko herself, her songs and stories, as well as to see her characters in augmented reality.
Polina Raiko's artistic life continues.
The book is free for libraries, cultural and educational institutions.
Please send your request to: culture@i.ua
All right reserved.
Official web-site of the Centre of Cultural Development «Totem»: totemua.org
The book “Polina Raiko: invisible” and this website is made possible by the sincere support of the American people and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the USAID Democratic Governance East Activity.
The content of the publications reflects the position of NGO Center of Cultural Development «Totem» and does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.