Birth of the Sun 2020

Kateryna Lysovenko painted “Birth of the Sun” directly on a concrete wall. Lysovenko was born in 1989, the same year the Berlin wall fell, signaling the end of the Soviet Union, in Kyiv, Ukraine. The theme of birth, so central to this work, takes on a particular resonance in light of Lysovenko's personal history, and Ukraine's position within a complex geopolitical landscape. Here we see the figure of a woman rendered in warm browns, her dark hair falling down her back, as she seems to give birth to a red sphere, perhaps the sun itself. The wall is raw, and it speaks to the everyday realities that encompass so many women. We might consider how "Birth of the Sun" stands in contrast to canonical representations of women that have historically dominated art. Lysovenko gives us a version of the divine feminine that is both powerful and palpably human.