Vita Bartosh’s collage series “Encyclopedia of Art”, created in 2023-2024, is about values, time, and strength. The power of will, knowledge and sense of humor – despite all the circumstances. It’s about how, in a foreign land, despite all the problems caused by staying abroad as a refugee with three children during the war in your homeland, you don’t lose your sense of life and your sense of art. How to almost dissolve in despair and find yourself again, the real you. Behind the seemingly cheerful visual cocktail of mixed images, there are thoughts about everyday life and reflections on people, time, choice, fate, and the future. The intersection of fragments of reproductions of famous works from the world’s encyclopedia of art with everyday phrases and stereotypical expressions turns handmade collages into topical memes from social networks that will respond to you with encouraging desperate humor. After all, the exhibition is also a good therapeutic self-check for the level of your sense of humor, and thus your current state of mind.
Vita Bartosh: “The reproductions of the paintings on the pages of the encyclopedia ‘talked’ to me like old friends. They reminded me of stories from my childhood, reproached me for my failures, told me forgotten jokes, and made me laugh. They ‘spoke’ to me in my favorite Podillia dialect, in the voices of my family and friends who were so far away. So I finally rejected the idea of reading and took up scissors. I decided to give voices to the mute pictures and live emotions to the frozen faces. In the collages, you will see characters from different paintings and eras meeting in unusual situations. I really wanted to make the paintings that always seemed so detached from our lives more realistic, to bring them closer to our present. In my collages, these are ordinary people with worries, joys, hopes, not cosmic beings.”
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Vita Bartosh is a graphic artist, photographer, designer, fashion designer, tailor, art teacher, tour guide, and volunteer for the Ukraїner project.
Born in 1982 in Khmelnytskyi, she graduated from Khmelnytskyi National University, Department of Design in 2005. Among her teachers were Mykola Mazur, Oleksandr Humenchuk, and Liudmyla Rozhko-Pavlenko.
Since 2005, she has been living and working in Kyiv.
Since the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022, she has been temporarily living in Germany with her family.