The exhibition project brings together a series of works on wallpaper, Welcome to Paradise, with related paintings created between 2022 and 2025. In these works, I explore how mass culture and war shape our perception of space and influence identity.
At the core of the exhibition is the cycle Welcome to Paradise (2023 – 2024) — an attempt to analyze how pop culture creates illusions of ideal places through wallpaper, a popular element of interior design in post-Soviet homes of the late 1990s – 2000s. Such backdrops offered an affordable way to “zone” and decorate a room, to create a personal dream of “paradise.” Wallpapers with titles like Gardens of Eden or Heavenly Delight, and other variations of the word “paradise,” can still be found for sale today. In the series, I oppose this imagined zone of comfort to the real experience of war. Onto these idealized images, scorched earth, ruined structures, and emptiness emerge.
The exhibition opens with a painting made just days before the full-scale invasion. The work There Will Be No Palms in Paradise became the starting point for the idea of working with wallpaper further. I dedicated this painting to regions of Ukraine (mainly the Left Bank), which I had actively studied while documenting their architectural landmarks and monumental art. At the center of the composition stands the image of the Palace of Culture “Metallurg” in Dnipro, next to which I placed an imagined fountain, surrounded by wildflowers breaking through the asphalt — plants typical of the region. Flanking this scene is a colonnade that imitates the kind of composition often used in wallpaper designs.
These spatial decorations, once symbols of a dream about an ideal place, today recall the loss of access to Crimea, the Sea of Azov, the steppes, and eastern Ukraine. They are a fusion of my personal memories and the collective pain of loss, layered one upon another. I recall a familiar process from childhood, when my grandmother would redecorate her space with wallpaper every few years. Working with this material in my artistic practice, I do not know what condition that same apartment is in now, in a city occupied since 2022, who lives there today, whether the wallpaper is still intact, has burned, or has been painted over.
The exhibition also includes paintings from 2022 – 2025. These works use composite images of Ukrainian cities and architectural ruins to examine the link between history and the present. The context of Dnipro is especially important to me, so I include works that depict its landmarks to speak about locality and the significance of place in wartime. A leading theme for me is the preservation of architectural and artistic heritage. For example, in one painting, I depict the summer theater in Dnipro’s Globa Park, nicknamed “the Shell” by locals. The abandoned theater, designed by architect Oleh Petrov, is currently unused and deteriorating. Another work in the exhibition is dedicated to Ernest Kotkov’s sculptural composition Dnipro Waves near the Meteor Stadium, which was destroyed in 2019 to make way for a new shopping mall.
I aim to create a space for reflection on how war transforms not only the physical but also the emotional landscape, reshaping our sense of home, safety, and the ideal. After the occupation of my hometown, Dnipro became a second home for me and my parents. Dnipro is a fortress city, a refuge, and an important cultural hub. This exhibition also comprehends the personal and collective experience of displacement, loss, and newfound attachment to place.
Over the course of several years working on this series, I have turned within it to different themes: from the lost cultural heritage of the Crimean Peninsula to ecological problems on the shores of Donetsk region. Beginning with There Will Be No Palms in Paradise, where I wanted to ironically comment on ideas of paradise with palms on distant islands, I arrive at a declaration of love for certain places that have been lost forever. When thinking about wallpaper, I am not analyzing the image itself but rather looking at it through the prism of memories of the apartments where it remained. In doing so, I let go of irony in my statements, leaving space only for love.
Karina Synytsia
WHEN: October 8 — December 6, 2025
WHERE: Artsvit Gallery, 21a Krutohirnyi Descent, Dnipro. Entrance through the glass door from the side of Uspenska Square
ENTRANCE IS FREE
Desing: Alla Sorochan
Karina Synytsia was born in 1999 in Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk region. In 2019, she graduated from Kharkiv State Art College with a degree in Painting Pedagogy. In 2023, she received her Bachelor’s degree in Easel and Monumental Painting from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. She currently lives and works in Kyiv.
In her artistic practice, Karina Synytsia works with painting and monumental techniques, particularly mural painting. She depicts architectural structures and constructions, as well as landscapes, focusing on the emptiness, void, and decline of these spaces and objects. In her works, architectural elements appear as decorations of the urban environment, while the thematic and symbolic core of her pieces centers on the expression of human emotions, emotional states, and social aspects of life.
The artist's statements and works are presented in the second edition of the Ukrainian section of Secondary Archive, as well as in the archival projects ‘The Sky Is Open. Voices From Ukraine’ and ‘Ukraine on Fire’ (from the Small Gallery of the Art Arsenal). She participated in the recent group exhibitions Secondary Archive: Women Artists in War (Galeria Labirynt, Lublin) and A Sense of Security (YermilovCentre, Kharkiv), as well as the solo exhibition It Is Impossible to Restore Cracks in a Dry Layer (Galeria Labirynt, Lublin). Residencies: Ukrainian Ecologies (by IZOLYATSIA and the Ukrainian Network for Environmental Humanities), Residency for Ukrainian Feminist Artists, organised by Martin Roth's initiative, etc.
