This was the first series I created after arriving in Ireland. At the time, I could not find words for what my family and I survived during the siege of Mariupol in February–March 2022. Images spoke more clearly than language. All of my art materials had been left behind in occupied Mariupol, and life in exile left neither the space nor the means to return to large-scale painting. Collage became the only way I could speak about what had happened.

This series is about the cruelty of war and the quiet courage of ordinary civilians – those who, under constant shelling, stepped outside to light a fire and boil water, so their family could share a single cup of hot tea in a city without electricity, heating, gas, or running water, in temperatures falling below minus ten degrees. It is about people who gave away their food so someone they loved might survive long enough to escape; parents who covered their children with their own bodies; family members who said goodnight, not knowing whether they would live to see the morning — and who, if they did, greeted each sunrise as something miraculous.

Two collages in the series are dedicated to the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023, when Russian forces blew up the dam and unleashed catastrophic flooding across southern Ukraine. Entire villages disappeared under water. People were killed, tens of thousands were forced to flee their homes, and countless animals died alongside the devastated landscape — a tragedy that left a scar on both the land and the memory of those who witnessed it.