Tarakan Drawing

My art is a conversation with myself. It begins with an impulse — an image, a feeling, or a question that cannot be ignored. I don’t adhere to a single theme, style, or technique — everything depends on where I am, what I feel, and what needs to be expressed. I describe my approach as “surrealistic realism”: my works are rooted in real experiences and objects, but reality in them is refracted through internal perception. Life itself feels surreal to me — and it is through this lens that I’m able to speak about things that are difficult to express directly: anxiety, longing, childlike vulnerability, a sense of loss, the search for shelter, or the uncovering of what often remains unnoticed. For me, material is never secondary. Sometimes, the surface itself suggests what should emerge on it. An old carpet, for example, may become a space for memory, imagination, grief, or infinity. What matters is not only what I depict, but how it feels — physically, honestly, and personally. Biography Sazha Gazovaya (Varvara Chorna) is an artist from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She was born in 2001. She began her education at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, where she studied photographic art and visual practices. Later, she received a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. Varvara primarily works with oil on canvas, but her artistic language is not limited to a single technique or surface. Handcrafted canvases and found materials — including old carpets — play an important role in her practice. These elements become not just backgrounds, but carriers of memory and symbols of internal space. The themes of her work arise from personal experience and events that shape her perception of self and the world. Memory, physicality, solitude, transformation, and vulnerability are recurring states that find expression in images often balancing between the real and the fantastical. Varvara has participated in exhibitions in Ukraine and Spain, and one of her works is part of the permanent collection of the MACVAC Museum. She currently lives and works in Kharkiv.