“The Step No One Remembers”

This work is about a child’s very first steps. At its base is a photograph taken on a birthday, on a day that should have been a celebration but seemed to freeze somewhere inside.

A small person walks forward, not knowing why the world around her is so sharp and broken. We do not see her face — only the movement, the step every one of us once made and does not remember. And though the mind erases these moments, they stay forever in the memory of the body.

The child carries toys with her — the things that give a sense of safety and home. A soft coloured ball, sewn from scraps of fabric, is everything she managed to save and take along the road. Around her is a city with countless walls and very little warmth. And among these cold fragments the child remains the one living, bright flame.

This is a story about childhood and memory beginning long before we learn to speak. About an experience hard to explain in words, which forms us all the same.

I use embroidery to “ground” this moment. Thread by thread, very slowly, I try to hold what usually disappears. It is an attempt to keep the memory of first steps in a world that turned out to be too difficult for a small child.

• YEAR

  2025
• MATERIAL

  Organza, DMC cotton
• TECHNIQUE

  Double-sided stitch
• SIZE

  30 × 30 cm
• COUNTRY

  Ukraine