Yevhén Vélychev is a young and already well-known Ukrainian artist born in Odésa in 1993. He is an illustrator and graphic designer. In his work he combines painting, collage and digital printing. According to the artist’s interview: “An artist has to be a researcher of society: both a sociologist and a psychologist. There is no other way to work with modern art.”

The work “Hodegetria” was created by Vélychev in 2016. It is an installation placed on the floor of the exhibition hall. In the centre of the installation lies a long, narrow white canvas, on which a woman walking forward with a child in her arms. They are depicted in black paint. The woman’s appearance is an image of a Soviet woman confident in a bright communist future as was depicted on the ideological posters of the USSR. But instead of heads, the mother and the child have a plan of a two-room independent apartment (a large room replaces the mother’s head, a small one — the child’s head).

Near the canvas, on the floor, a plan of one room in a dormitory is schematically depicted with blue tape. Then it turns out that the woman and the child leave this room.

The title of the work “Hodegetria” refers to religious symbols. This is the name of a certain type of icon, which depicts the Virgin Mary with Christ. The work depicts the realities of people’s lives in the Soviet Union. A woman, who lives in a one-room dormitory, but dreams of a two-room independent apartment, is an icon of the Soviet era.

Lines made of blue tape may also be interpreted as the limit of the woman’s living space. Then her step is an almost impossible attempt to break out of the dormitory and into the big world.

The author uses the Orthodox term for the title of the work, probably to emphasise the sanctity of Soviet women who came to big cities from the countryside, lived in dormitories for many years, raised their children alone, but never gave up seeking a better life and sometimes achieving it.