Doorways of Light:
Vytynanky of Daria Alyoshkina

Daria Alyoshkina's work touches on the ephemerality, strength, and fragility of her pieces echo the paper medium. At once intimately familiar to her audience as a material of the everyday, its decorative nature comes alive through the geometric designs in the cut designs by Alyoshkina, referencing traditional Ukrainian geometric motifs as well as her own unique visual language. The scale of her work responds to the space where it can be displayed, often hung in a banner or displayed against a window, symbolically creating doorways of imagination. The vytynanky pierce the surface, as doorways of a thousand cuts, pulling the viewer through the material surface. Light and shadow interplay across the cut surface, adding tension to the paper that the eye then navigates.