New Life by Mariia Bonchuk (UKR)

I am an artist from Ukraine. Currently working and living in Tallinn. Art became a big part of my life from early childhood. I started to attend art school when I was 10.
In 2012 -2014, I studied Ukrainian folk ceramic in Central Ukraine. From summer 2014, I moved to Kyiv. I went to Kyiv National University of Technology and Design and studied there until the end of 2015. In January 2016, I, together with my husband, moved to Tallinn, Estonia. I had to drop out of university in Kyiv.
Since then, I started to search for opportunities to join design studios. I didn’t find any. It was hard to get used to a new place where you didn’t know anybody. On the other hand, I had a lot of time to try a lot of styles and techniques. I was making patterns, illustrations, lino prints, drawings, etc.
In summer 2018, I was hospitalised to a psychiatric clinic after a suicide attempt. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Most of my life, I was ignoring my feelings. But after I started to understand my problem, I reconsidered my views. I started making expressive drawings to understand my feelings and to show the spectre of my experiences to people around.
A bit later, in September, I was hospitalised again. I went through the course of ECT. After this, my state was stabilised, but I couldn’t do anything that was related to art.
At the beginning of 2019, I started to make slow steps to return to work. I made a series of monoprints and started using more colour in my works. A bit later I realised that I am ready for something bigger, so I started working with large canvases. When I am working on a canvas, I do my best to show the way I see feelings. During the process, I started finding peace with myself, and daily work keeps me going through my life.

The period in the hospital was a rebirth of me as a person and as an artist. I felt a strong urge and desire to tell my story to the world. And I found that I can do it in the most convenient way for me – by painting.
“New life” – it’s my first exhibition and a statement about myself as an artist. “New life” – it is a powerful expression of feelings and experiences. “New life” – as a manifesto that we can start again and again as much as we need it.
Each painting is showing certain emotions. Some are hard to describe or explain with words. I hope that seeing them will tell you more than all the words possible. And I hope that each one will resonate with your soul.