Irina Koukhanova: Tryzub Stowaway III

Irina Koukhanova’s ceramic sculptures stand at the intersection of folk memory and contemporary defiance. They aren’t just whimsical animal-forms on stout legs; they’re reimagined kumanets vessels, traditional Ukrainian forms that once poured and carried, now transformed into carriers of memory, guardians of identity, and witnesses to war. Tryzub Stowaway III hides Ukraine’s coat of arms inside the belly of a cow. A folk form within a folk form, it whispers of displacement and the quiet acts of preservation carried out when entire homes are gutted.