VARVARA UHLIK
PLAY GROUND
SWAN
SUNSHINE, HOW ARE YOU?
SLAV GAZE
DIGITAL (AFTER)
COMMISSIONS AND NOT
Three steel sculptures, water, black dye
This installation revisits the architecture of my post-Soviet childhood. Three metal structures - a swing, a slide, and a rocket are reconstructed from memory, based on the standardised playgrounds that can be found across Ukraine and the former USSR.
These objects evoke a shared visual past and reveal how ideology embeds itself in the everyday, shaping both imagination and control. Stripped of function and re-contextualised in a suspended environment, the sculptures sit between ruin and monument, nostalgia and unease. What once symbolised innocence now feels marked by violence - a quiet echo of systems that have not vanished, only shifted.
The work also reflects on Ukraine as a political “playground” - a territory historically caught between empires, and today entangled in global disputes, extractive deals, and ongoing war. Here, play becomes a way to consider how childhood, nationhood, and agency are shaped by larger forces, and how those influences persist and evolve over time.
INSTALLATION
SCULPTURES
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel
Mild steel