Ukraine to you

Julia Melnik of Kiev, Ukraine won 2016's The Next Level Of Cosplay Scholarship. Julia's "White Walker," inspired by Game of Thrones and mashed up with H.R. Giger's design work, impressed judges, winning both the fan vote and the judges' decisions outright for the first time of contest's history. Way to go, Julia!

Julia works as a beauty and fashion makeup artist in Europe, but is completely self-taught in prosthetics and special effects. After her strong entry in last year's competition fell short of the grand prize, Julia worked all year to craft this year's winner.

Entries for next year's contest will open in January 2017.

For his ongoing series “Art History in Contemporary Life,” Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov takes scenes and figures lifted from classical paintings and drops them into modern-day life. Bouguereau’s Song of the Angels appears to take place on an empty subway car while a pair of men from Holbein’s famous The Ambassadors are transported to the table of a seedy bar. Much like Etienne Lavie’s billboard series and Julien de Casabianca’s recent Outings Project, the series creates an interesting and playful new context for artworks usually only encountered in museums and art history books. You can see more over on Facebook. (via Supersonic)

Some brand new sweet murals appeared on the Kyiv’s walls. This one was made by Spanish painter Gonzalo Borondo. It’s said he gain inspiration for creating it after seeing Saint Sophia’s cathedral.

Another one was created by Aaron Li-Hill, American artist.  It’s located on the walls of National Technical University of Ukraine, Kiev Polytechnic Institute and it is symbolizing moving atoms with their interection that creates energy.

I couldn’t upoload yesterday but it deserves to be written.

Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko, sentenced in Russia on bogus murder charges to 22 years in prison, was exchanged on May 25 for two Russian officers imprisoned in Ukraine.

The exchange took place in secrecy in the airport of Rostov-on-Don in Russia. Savchenko arrived to Kyiv Boryspil Airport at 3 p.m.  (from http://www.kyivpost.com ) I’m really glad our country returned her and also hope, that we will manage to return many others that are still held captive, so we shouldn’t stop here and need to advance in further negotiatings.

During recent years Ukraine’s capital Kyiv began to fill up with with murals -  pieces of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. Well, in Kyiv mostly on walls. Moreover, this spring was decided to held in kyiv an event called Art united us (https://www.facebook.com/artunitedus/), the main point of which is that 100 artist from all over the world will come to our capital and create 100 murals.

I’m really happy about it because now our streets seem more lively and beautiful. Also, it’s great to stroll along the street and than suddenly find out one of these. There is even a site, which shows all murals of Kyiv: http://kyivmural.com/  .

I want to show you some of my favourite : )

Also, the biggest (or longest) mural of Europe is in Kyiv. It was painted on the walls of 26floors apartment building.

Vyshyvanka is the colloquial name for the embroidered shirt in Ukrainian national costume. Every ukrainian must have at least one. It is used as talisman, good luck charm and also a beautiful garment.

That is one of the most amazing Ukrainian things. Although part of this art may look a bit simple, most of it is beautifull and stunning, especially on cultery.

Petrykivka is a  traditional Ukrainian decorative painting, which originates from Dnipropetrovsk oblast of Ukraine, Petrykivka village. Pertykivka painting traditionally decorated house walls and everyday household items, the earliest known samples of it dates back to the 17th century. At the same time it is also a modern art that is in process of developing and reforming (yeah, I copied this part from wiki ^^ Though, I’m gonna tell a little more than was there ).

In Ukraine it was common for people in villages to paint their houses once or twice during a year to make it beautiful. But housemaids didn’t stop only on houses. Almost everything in the household had a pattern on it. From a small scoop to a stove.

It’s belived, that Petrykivka paintings on paper became popular at the end of 19th centuary. Before that, all patterns were painted mostly on objects and walls.

In 1935-1936 the first exposition of Petrykivka painting was held in Kyiv and then Moscow. The exposition was a total sucess and after it a special school for painters appeared. From that time on, Petrykivka became more known and in villages were built different museums and workshops.

In 2012 Petrykivka painting was claimed as one of intangible cultural heritages of Ukraine and in 2013 it became an intangible cultural heritage of humanity according to UNESCO.

Petrykivka painting is mostly based on ukrainian flora, which painters wanted to present in their creation. That’s why Petrykivka‘s technic consists of many single brushstrokes. It helps to make detailed leaves and flowers.

Petrykivka in modern life

So, after hearing of Jamala wining Eurovision 2016 I finaly decided to create a blog dedicated to Ukraine.

This year I personally was voting for Freddie from Hungary to have the first place with his song that reminded me of my favourite Imagine Dragons. Also I enjoyed Israel’s and Australia’s singers because they were really good and Russian singer’s Sergei Lazarev’s performance was amazing to me, because I couldn’t figure out how, just how he could do all those stuns.

2016 contest  was claimed to be “Politicalvision” but, well, it always was. I mean neighbourhood-countries were frequently voting for each other and nobody cared about it at all. But even though, I think that the results were almost always decided by people and this time isn’t an exception. Some say that in Eurovision 2016 almost win the country that isn’t even a part of Europe but so what? The performance of Australia was stunning and till the last second during voting results I thought it will take the 1st place. Also, stuff about Ukraine winning only because Europe was pitying it, is nonsense.

Jamala is a great singer of Ukraine who is certainly really talented. I don’t care what other people say about lyrics of her song but for me they were really touching and beautiful, thay were telling the real story so they shoudn’t be changed. However, to tell the truth, I never expected that she will take the 1st place because I thought that people would prefer a happier and more catchy song. I thought we would take 2nd or 3rd. But Europe understood her. Listened to her. And that’s amazing. For that I’m really grateful. Having been choosen the 2nd by jury and audience means that both of them liked her and the 1st place is rightfully hers.

ps I’m really grateful to Jamala for her hard work because while watching voting results of the audience, when only 5 countries were left and while doing some math I understood that we can actually win, that moment of hope, it was unbelivable.

ps(2) I think everyone who participated in Eurovision is already great because I can’t even imagine how bloody scary it is just to stand there and also thanks to Sweeden for great hosting and lots of Avicii’s music)