In 2011, while completing my Master’s degree at UNSW COFA, I joined a student artist group called All For You (AFY). The group brings together artists who were studying at or had graduated from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
Founded by artist Chi Da Kim, AFY included 32 members representing more than 20 countries, creating a diverse and international creative environment.
That year, the group held two exhibitions in Sydney. The first, All For You, took place at Global Gallery in Surry Hills in July 2011. The second exhibition, Transcendency, was held at the Arthouse Hotel in Sydney CBD.
These exhibitions marked an important stage in my early exhibition practice in Australia and my engagement with the local contemporary art community.
My journey with jewellery began in 2008, after a workshop in Kyiv sparked my curiosity about working on a small, intimate scale. What started as experimentation soon grew into a deeper fascination with adornment as both object and cultural expression. My interest truly ignited while curating a fashion show of traditional Ukrainian clothing. Immersing myself in the richness of these garments led me to closely study traditional Ukrainian multi-row jewellery — its structure, symbolism, rhythm, and presence. These pieces are more than decoration; they carry history, identity, and a strong visual language. Since then, I have created hundreds of jewellery pieces, each one informed by that tradition while shaped through my own contemporary sensibility. Working at this scale allows for precision, repetition, and variation — a dialogue between heritage and personal expression. Jewellery, for me, is another way of telling stories through form and material — wearable, tactile, and closely connected to the body.
