Mykhailo Skop

I created a series of images depicting Ukrainian poets and writers that move beyond traditional portraiture, deliberately ignoring facial features. Instead, the canvases present smiling shadows — emotional recollections of living individuals. We are not our faces in photographs, nor are we defined by the exact date of our birth. We are what we leave behind for the world.This is especially true for Ukrainian creative figures, whose lives were often marked by trials, discrimination, and threats from oppressors. The good they produced has the power to make a difference for others. For this reason, the paintings represent a symbolic reality, woven from the most significant images of their creative work and pivotal moments in their lives.Each painting becomes a complex weave of meanings, forming not merely a portrait but rather a “personification of creativity” — a kind of “icon” of a poet’s or writer’s literary legacy.

Ark is an animated video created specifically for the performance of the spiritual anthem “O Great and Only God” (Bozhe Velykyi Yedynyi), performed by Taras Topolia with the participation of Ukrainian religious leaders and chaplains, Keith Kellogg, Mark Bjornson, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and others at the Prayer Breakfast of the President of Ukraine in Kyiv, 2025.In the hardest moments, Ukrainians become one. As we did in February 2022. Regardless of faith, ideology, race, or anything else — there is a place for everyone in our Ark. Because independence is not just a word. It is dignity and solidarity. It is resistance to violence. It is you and me. It is a home that exists wherever those closest to us are. It is trust. It is the memory of those who defend our tomorrow. The entire hull of the ship is composed of 34 words — marking the years of independence. They are written in different languages so that the world can understand what Independence means. A terrifying seven-headed serpent seeks to consume us — a prison cage tightening in darkness. But together, we are the light that darkness cannot overcome. On this path of struggle, we are not alone. We have true friends — those with whom we grow ever closer, and who fight the serpent in their own ways: sanctions that weaken the empire; military aid; countless volunteers and supporters. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me…” (Psalm 23:4)

Telesyk is a phantasmagoric hero of the Ukrainian epic, who tirelessly performs metamodernist actions and closes postcolonial gestalts. An image inspired by Ivan Kotlyarevsky's "Aeneid" and the traditional Ukrainian nativity scene. Therefore, he is ironic, travesty, and combines elements of mass and traditional culture, embodying the formation of modern Ukrainian identity.Telesyk is a smiling shadow of the Ukrainian subconscious, an ironic allusion to the image of the Cossack Mamai, whose name means "nobody". Therefore, Telesyk can be anyone.#NEIVANMADE

In Ukraine, it was customary that a bride came to her groom with a payment or a property to contribute to their new family. Often, a dowry – a posag – consisted of the garments tailored and embroidered by the women of the bride’s family. This way, they gave her the means for living. The posag tradition was ancient and lasted for many centuries; it survived wars, hungers, and ruin.When russia invaded their country, Ukrainians took to arms to defend their sovereignty. Thousands voluntarily joined the army; hundreds of thousands found their own ways of volunteering for the sake of freedom. Crafting camouflage nets has become one of the most common volunteer activities. Since the first days of war, people have been, and still are, bringing their greenish and brownish clothes to be cut to stripes and woven into a net. I believe this to be a revival of the posag tradition, a symbolic act of sacrificing something private, subjective to craft a collective, common fabric that will literally protect the future of the entire people.The Posag project aims to work with a traumatic experience of war. With it, I’m attempting to comprehend the possibility of renaissance and return to peaceful life. Hence, the idea is to undo the net, to weave it backwards, so to say. A single-piece fabric is unwoven, the pieces of cloths get sorted and re-fashioned into the garment they once had been – the gown that becomes a symbol of the maimed and then healed future crafted as a dowry for the new generation of Ukrainians. The process of unweaving, sorting, and re-fashioning is performed by the women representing three generations of one family. Thus, Posag will revive the ancient and forgotten tradition of collective crafting a wedding gift.#NEIVANMADECenter of Contemporary Art M17, Kyiv, Ukraine

Early February 2022. Two weeks before the full-scale invasion, I remember it as a time of complete information oversaturation—a chaos of voices from various politicians, experts, diplomats, influencers, friends, random passersby... and my own voice. Everyone was talking about whether there would be a major war, an escalation, or if it was just a bluff—because it seemed utterly impossible. Amid the growing, deafening anxiety, the only thing I could create were small black figures. They emerged mechanically, without any attempt to form meaningful structures, playful interpretations, or conscious reflection. They were only movement and the growing cacophony all around.The rumble of misanthropy, the grinding teeth of tanks. The one devouring the sun, the one tearing words to shreds. The unthinkable.I couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t find the words. So I simply drew what I felt. The cycle ended on February 24, 2022. A year later, these sketches became the foundation for the project "Just Before."#NEIVANMADE

One of the aspects of the Russo-Ukrainian war is the informational struggle. Russian occupiers seek to justify mass killings, torture, and the very fact of occupying territories of an independent country. Propaganda is being spread everywhere to create discord in democratic states, undermining Europe from within.My project "Behind the Blinds" is a multimedia installation consisting of an informational corridor we traverse daily. It's filled with curtains featuring propagandist quotes from Russians. Each word and symbol on them obscures the view of what lies at the end of the corridor. At the end, there's a room where only charred remains from the ruined city of Irpin remain.This project aims to raise questions: Are we capable of perceiving the truth as it is, having passed through layers of propaganda? Can the viewer discern the truth through the prism of lies they may absorb in the future? Is there a chance for truth?The installation ''Behind the Blinds'' is part of the touring exhibition 'Fake (f)or Real' by organized by the House of European History, that exhibits in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Sweden.#NEIVANMADE

For me, historical photos are not just about history; they are about people. People like you and me. Hence, even if you don't recognize the specific revolution or war depicted in a photograph, there's always a chance to resonate with the emotions captured on film. Empires, ideologies, convictions, and prohibitions emerge and fade away. But emotions endure. They serve as the bridge that allows us to realize how little separates us from those whose names vanished decades ago, yet who continue to smile or weep from black-and-white frames. We live in times of war. Therefore, perhaps more than anyone else, we're capable of empathizing with the figures in these photographs, who are mere shadows of the past to the peaceful world. We ourselves take countless photos every day. And many of them are historical too, for those who will live tomorrow, we have long become shadows of the past.In the "When We Were Shadows" historical photos are transformed into silhouettes, preserving only the emotions. For it is these emotions that make us human. Visitors can become part of the installation, complementing the works with their own shadows, creating unique images with every moment. This is offered as a symbolic recognition of our own presence in the global historical process.Artistic project was created in collaboration with @avangard.ukraine, as part of the team effort "Culture in the Rear" in the Gunpowder Tower, Lviv, Ukraine in February 9-11 2024.  The project's opening was featured a musical-shadow performance by the band NAZVA, as well as a charitable sale of original merchandise.#NEIVANMADE

How can one truly comprehend another person’s experience without having lived through it? How does one articulate the ineffable, where language itself falters? This question, explored by Edith Stein, became central to my practice with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. At that time, I was creating wartime posters to communicate the Ukrainian people’s struggle against occupation to the West. Yet, Ukrainian culture and history remain largely unknown in Western Europe. Without recognition of commonalities or an understanding of another’s subjectivity—whether that of an individual or, in this case, an entire nation—genuine empathy remains elusive. My fundamental task, therefore, is to narrate the Ukrainian experience through art, distilling real figures into archetypes and recognizable visual tropes intrinsic to European cultural memory.The project Arcana Belli presents an attempt to interpret Ukraine and my personal experience of war through the imagery of the Rider-Waite Tarot, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. To me, Tarot is first and foremost a phenomenon of Western European culture, an accumulation of diverse cultural elements—religion, archetypes, mythology, folklore, and social structures. In a sense, it is European civilization itself, distilled into a symbolic system of 78 images.The structured and recognizable visual language of Tarot allows for a fixed iconography that can be read universally. In Arcana Belli, I engage this structure, interweaving the realities of contemporary Ukraine with traditional Ukrainian iconography, folklore, direct citations from Ukrainian art and poetry. These elements coexist with references to and allusions from Western European cultural heritage, creating a dialogue between the local and the global.A key referential framework for this project is Francisco Goya’s Los desastres de la guerra cycle. In its expressive depictions of the suffering of the Spanish people at the beginning of the 19th century, I find parallels with Ukraine’s present. As Ernst Cassirer stated, “Man lives in a symbolic universe.” What makes Goya’s cycle particularly significant to me is that it does not merely document brutal realities but instead conveys their underlying symbolic essence—an approach that also defines Ukrainian sacred art. Consequently, in Arcana Belli, the realities of war and the everyday life of Ukrainians are imbued with symbolic meaning.The exhibition consists of 78 posters, each capturing different aspects of Ukrainian life since 2014. Each work is accompanied by a quotation, primarily from Ukrainian and Western European literary texts, highlighting the metaphorical essence of the piece and reinforcing the interplay between textual and visual dimensions of memory and identity.The deck consists of both Major and Minor Arcana, totaling 78 cards. The set includes a collection of handwritten epigraphs for each card.#NEIVANMADE

Tomorrow is the day we've been waiting for nine years. The war will leave our homes, the sky will clear, and the sun of freedom will rise again over the free land. I've been contemplating what tomorrow holds. Our cities won't rise from the ashes, those we've lost won't return, and we ourselves won't suddenly enter a land of wealth and success. However, something deeper will change. Something that only those living in today can understand.This cycle has been inspired by the works of American realists such as Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Charles L. Peterson, Hart Benton, and Grant Wood. They depicted the simple lives of ordinary people. Their paintings, infused with light and calm, faith in humanity, and freedom as an undeniable simple truth.This is how I envision tomorrow's Ukraine: freedom for everyone and peaceful life as the highest ideals that accompany us into the new world we are attaining right now. This will be our paradise, which even in the darkest times shines within each of us. That's why I used these idyllic paintings as a basis for finding meaningful connections between post-war America and the future post-war Ukraine, highlighting analogies and differences between our worlds.But how will Ukrainians themselves be in this paradise? The horrors of war have left an indelible mark on our hearts. Therefore, the protagonists of my paintings are those who suffer from PTSD. They are shadows who find themselves in the radiant world of simple peaceful life, trying to adapt to or get used to the fact that everything is already behind. Getting used to, while hiding boundless emptiness behind smiles.#NEIVANMADE 

We are living in historic times, where there are no small stories or random moments, as each of us weaves threads into an incredible tapestry of the world's longest day with our own memories. So, I select my own photos taken since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and transform them into a shadow theater, using symbols and images to reveal the historical context.

If you ask me, tomorrow is just a simple morning, the hustle and bustle of cities rushing under the vastness of the clear sky. Tomorrow is a day for which we fight and endure unimaginable losses. Tomorrow, we will build a new home, grander than any of the ancient seven wonders of the world. But today, a significant part of Ukraine is occupied and lies in ruins. Ukrainian culture has suffered immeasurable losses, as numerous cultural landmarks have been destroyed, many of which were deliberately eradicated to eliminate everything Ukrainian from our land.In my project, I aim to construct an image of "tomorrow,"a new Ukrainian utopia that emerges from the fusion of remnants of previous eras that shaped their vision of the future. I've chosen seven cultural objects in Ukraine, each of which is given the context of one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. In this way, I propose viewing the construction of these new landmarks as a symbolic act of rebuilding the entire country, one that can rival the colossal structures of antiquity in grandeur. The future is impossible without a reassessment of the past, without reflection that allows us to understand ourselves in a global context. Therefore, I "rebuild" these structures, drawing upon the legacy of the Ukrainian Avant-Garde from the 1910s-1930s. This artistic period is one of the brightest pages in Ukrainian art history, as it gave birth to a plethora of artists: Alexander Bogomazov, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Khvostenko-Khvostov, Alexandra Exter, Victor Palmov, David Burliuk, Maria Sinyakova, and countless others, creating radically new art for a new world. However, this unprecedented cultural blossoming was uprooted by Stalin's terror: many artists were killed, their works destroyed, and those who survived were forced to work to glorify an inhumane system. Instead, all the achievements of Ukrainian art during this period were falsely attributed to the "Russian Avant-Garde," stealing not only the artists but also their faith in the future. Therefore, using their ideas and style is my compensation for the lost utopia, a manifestation that the bright future constructed by Ukrainian avant-gardists cannot be destroyed by repression and mass killings. Our generation will bring to life the tomorrow for which our geniuses gave their lives.The cycle was created as part of the project "Renaissance" by Depositphotos and the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.#NEIVANMADE

An interactive project is an attempt to consider a work of art as an object, the integrity, form, and very existence of which depends on the audience. It serves as a way to consider the paradox of the "fragment", which is both a work and an index sign of the work depending on the point of perception.An object of 100x100 mm was created. It consisted of fragments of plaster collected from the walls of abandoned industrial buildings. There was a certain distance between the fragments so that the work would never be integral in the physical meaning of the word. A pattern is applied to the plane, designed to fix the initial position of each fragment in a single composition and identify it as part of the overall work. They distributed to all comers. The only condition for participation in the project was to indicate the coordinates of the fragment on the Google map, thus uniting the object in a single information field. The movement of fragments is proposed to be considered part of the formation of the object, so they should also be included in the map. In this way, the audience directly influences the work, which ceases to be a static closed system. The constant variables in it are the location of the fragments, as well as the area and depth of the work. Fragments can be destroyed, divided, or altered in any other way, which also affects the entire work. Movement and interaction are factors that make it almost impossible to "complete" the work because it is fundamentally variable.As 2025, the area occupied by the instalation is 229 797 200 км².#NEIVANMADE

Abandoned industrial sites, for me, are like shadows whose memories have been somehow lost. When you enter such buildings, their remnants don't always provide straightforward answers about what these places were in the past and what people did here. The futility of any attempt to reconstruct an objective history without significant distortions led me to free myself from the burden of definitive meanings and to question the real history. That's why I work with these spaces, covering their walls with images associated with ancient cultures, mythology, and beliefs. Like abandoned spaces, the interpretation of these images and symbols is entirely individual because they are created fundamentally without fixed meanings and are a unique intertext.Thus, by integrating conjecture and imagination, I aim to accumulate the multiplicity of meaning within these spaces, allowing them to be ruins of a sanctuary, temple, necropolis, or anything that couldn't possibly exist in a specific place.Following this principle, a series of objects were created in hard-to-reach places in Lviv. Together, they are proposed to be viewed as elements of an alternative geography, a city whose history exists only in the observer's conjectures.#NEIVANMADE