“Untitled,” 2025–2026

ceramics, textile, gauze, varnish, drawings

In the presented series, Alisa Kulesh addresses themes of isolation, inaccessible experience, and the instability of memory. The artist focuses on forms that carry traces of experiences that resist direct description. She creates quiet, semi-recognisable objects that resemble distorted memories or images with blurred contours. In scale, the ceramic sculptures are comparable to parts of the human body, yet they are stripped of any clear function or familiar physical characteristics, leaving their origin uncertain. As a material, ceramics evokes an organic connection to the earth, as well as domestic and ceremonial uses.

The artist wraps the objects in gauze and fabric, combining the logic of museum preservation with the act of dressing wounds. This semi-transparent layer protects the artefacts while at the same time isolating and distancing them from view, preventing the form from ever being fully revealed.

Alisa Kulesh was born in 2002 in Kyiv, Ukraine. From 2019 to 2023, she studied at the Borys Grinchenko Institute of Arts in the studio of Anna Kriukova. Following the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she relocated to Germany and began studying at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Professor Rita McBride. Since 2024, she has continued her studies in the class of Professor Alexandra Bircken. Alisa Kulesh’s artistic practice explores the intersections of war memory, material transformation, and bodily vulnerability. She is interested in forms that function as affective carriers of experience, bringing together personal and collective narratives on their surfaces.

Photographer: Anton Sorochak