For Ukrainian multimedia artist Maria Kulikovska, life has been marked by exile and displacement. While she has lost most of her material possessions, she has learned to regenerate, exploring and recreating the existential meanings of home. With her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, she regenerates with raw materials gathered over the past year—crutches, a cane, and unused underwear—objects meant to welcome a new baby, whose purposes were erased by war.
The gallery becomes an intimate space with an entry point that features a standing pregnant figure before a curtain. Passing through, viewers enter a realm that, as Kulikovska writes, “burns you alive”. As the artist faces the demands of pregnancy, motherhood and constant movement, she finds a remedy in the ancestral wisdom of herbs. As art historian Eszter Csillag writes, the herbs are “more than material; they embody a lineage of resilience, a tangible memory of care that crosses borders”.
