Photo © Andrei Stseburaka, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Andrei Stseburaka, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Andrei Stseburaka, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Andrei Stseburaka, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Oleksandr Osipov, courtesy of the YermilovCentre 
Photo © Oleksandr Osipov, courtesy of the YermilovCentre
In My Embrace
acrylic, oil, ink, gouache, pastel on canvas | Produced especially for the exhibition"Sense of Safety" | Donated to the YermilovCentre collection / 2024
*foundationClass is an art activist and educational initiative founded in 2016 at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin as a platform for mutual support, exchange, and access to art academies for cultural workers who have fled to Germany affected by war and political repression. Nearly every academic year *foundationClass assembles a new group of artists with refugee experience to support and develop their professional practice. This year's graduating class was invited to participate in an exhibition in Kharkiv.
Participants of the *foundationClass 2024 sacrificed their individual practices to transform their year's work into a large patchwork-like piece titled "In My Embrace," symbolizing togetherness and solidarity for an exhibition in Kharkiv. The collective weaving of a single cloth, which acts both as a protective shield and refers to traditional female knitting practices as well as to the children's game of making a blanket or coverlet into a shelter, links the idea of safety to collective practices of caring. The participants of the *foundationClass, who have a refugee experience, emphasise through the materiality and performativity of their work that safety is fragile and needs constant solidarity of care, support, and maintenance.
The gesture of forgoing and literally transforming individual practices into an intertwined canvas, where distinct artistic voices form seams and junctions rather than merging into a homogeneous smooth surface, highlights the principle of connectedness and interdependence.
An important motive behind this work is also the ecological perspective: as in a good household, no one wastes anything, *foundationClass participants use existing, produced materials to create new artwork.