Bozhena Chagarova: dialectical matrix

Bozhena Chagarova became the artistic discovery of 2018.

Polina Limina's essay about Bozhena's work won the 7th All-Ukrainian Art Recognition Competition, and her first exhibition was held in "Ya Gallery". Journalists and television channels went to the village of Vchoraisho, Zhytomyr region, where the artist lives with her parents.

"Her father travels to neighboring cities and towns to get threads of the right colors, and there he also finds schemes for cross-stitching - these are models with typical patterns. A girl, a boy, a flower, an animal, a tree, Jesus Christ - everything that is in demand. Bright clichés that help to create whimsical, almost mythological images as a result. The cow's head splits in two, Jesus holds men and women upside down, and the pastureland takes on the appearance of men's underwear. What should have been a template retains its inherent stylistics, but breaks through its very essence. It is like a letter that has the usual outlines, but does not convey any sound - it only hints at the possibility of language," Polina Limina writes in an essay.

Bozhena's works offer not just an artistic text, but a whole language that the artist speaks. Not even like that: the language that the artist had to invent for the possibility of her existence.
Quotes from interviews with Chychkan Sr., Pinchuk, Zabolotna, Solovyov, Troitsky - embroidered with a cross. Statements of Ukrainian politicians are embroidered with a cross. Excerpts from the works of Shakespeare, Schiller, Panas Myrny, Rila and Lenin - embroidered with a cross. Strange images of people with five heads, pigs, cows, bizarre houses, Jesus and the fire of hell - embroidered with a cross. And all this can be in one job. But what is most surprising is that it turns into something clear and crystal clear.