Mystetskyi Arsenal presents a personal exhibition by Anna Zvyagintseva, “Firefly”
On March 6, 2025, at 6:30 PM, we invite you to the opening of the exhibition “Firefly” by contemporary Ukrainian artist Anna Zvyagintseva.
Anna Zvyagintseva spent three months creating new works in the studio in the Old Arsenal — large-scale paintings and a vast textile shirt. On her canvases, the artist captures fragments of a familiar landscape. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific place, yet it draws you in, making you want to look closer. The landscape and the shirt create a space where you feel compelled to stay.
Anna Zvyagintseva’s practice focuses on finding the smallest movements in life. Snatching them out of the flow of life, the artist turns the scribbles of a painted ballpoint pen, scratches on a door handle or accidental touches into art.
Anna Zvyagintseva: “I’m interested in capturing what is difficult to capture. Invisible, ephemeral, routine actions often have no result, they may even be unattractive, but they represent an everyday activity that is meaningful.”
The exhibition includes works created from 2013 to the present. Among them are the work “To Plant a Stick”, a series of sculptures called “Misplaced Touches”, the video “Declaration of Intent and Doubt”, and the sculpture “To Draw Your Own Window, To Crumple The Paper”. Anna Zvyagintseva uses various materials and media — from metal to paper, photography to painting. The title of the exhibition was given by the artist herself. Amidst the uncertainties of war, Anna turns to the search for inner light. It is embodied by a firefly, which helps to overcome the fear of the road even in the darkest forest.
Curator of the project: Natasha Chychasova
In the four halls of the Old Arsenal, a coherent space of the contemporary Ukrainian artist Anna Zvyagintseva will be set up. It is a stable and familiar world where all the seeming accidents take their place and where the real and the fantasy coexist. We invite Mystetskyi Arsenal visitors to go on a journey through this world and travel in time from contemporary to earlier works. We invite you to travel through the world of the artist who caught and gently holds a firefly in her palms.
About the artist
Anna Zvyagintseva was born in 1986 in Dnipro. From 2004 to 2010, she studied painting at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture at the Faculty of Painting in Vasyl Gurin’s studio. In 2020, as a recipient of the Gaude Polonia scholarship, she worked with Professor Mirosław Bałka in the media art department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 2021-2022, she was a resident at the Jan Van Eyck Academie for Art, Design and Reflection (Maastricht, the Netherlands). Since 2010, she has been a member of the Hudrada curatorial group.
The press tour of the exhibition will take place on the opening day, March 6, at 5:30 PM.
You can visit the exhibition from March 6, 2025, to May 4, 2025.
Working hours: Wednesday-Sunday, from 12 PM to 8 PM (the Ticket Office is open until 7.30 PM).
On the opening day, March 6, the exhibition will be open from 6 PM to 9 PM.