I didn’t grow up in a gallery. I grew up in rural Ukraine, with more potatoes than possibilities.

I grew up in rural Ukraine, surrounded by a socialist culture that fostered a strict daily artistic practice from early age. Art, in my childhood, was less about discovery and more about discipline: art, piano, and ballet lessons from the age of three formed a constant series of exercises designed to perfect technique and align creativity with collective ideals. We were taught to draw precisely and to think within the boundaries of ideological guidance. Yet beneath that structure was a quiet resistance: the longing to express something of my own.

As I grew older and moved continents, I came how deeply that system had shaped me. Not only in how I make art, but in how I understand freedom. This methodical training gave me a foundation, but also a tension I’ve carried ever since: between order and imagination, obedience and self-expression.

My work now is, in many ways, a reconciliation with that past. A way of transforming the discipline I once inherited into the freedom I continue to seek. - A. Xx

I didn’t grow up in a gallery. I grew up in rural Ukraine, with more potatoes than possibilities.