This photo project is my way of making sense of what has been experienced, preserving the memory of those we have lost, and creating a visual narrative about collective trauma and human resilience.

The foundation of the series consists of photographs of plucked flowers and scans of dried ones.

The project was born at a time when the bodies of fallen soldiers began to be brought en masse to our city. People lined the roads, knelt, and laid flowers to honor the heroes. Each day, fresh flowers replaced the withered ones, and I began to capture these moments.

Later, I dried flowers from the garden in old Soviet books — symbols of a past that still weighs heavily on us. Those dried flowers were then scanned.

Some photographs or scans reflect personal stories from the past or the present.

The image of dead flowers runs throughout the project as its central metaphor: they symbolize not only grief and loss, but also memory and hope that the sacrifice was not in vain. This is the bloom of the nation.

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Publications:

2024 - Best Picture, Online photo publishing from artjobs

2025 - 10 Questions with Olesia Bilyk, Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain

 

​Group exhibitions:

2026 - “Free walls”, Flowerbed Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine

2025 - «ART: RECONSTRUCTION 2025”, Lviv Palace of Arts, Ukraine

2025 - “Through experience” Center for Contemporary Art in Zaporizhia, Ukraine

2025 - “NOSTALGIA, UTOPIAS AND RETHINKING OF EASTERN EUROPE”, Garage Nord & oseréd:ia, Hannover, Germany

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