Home Participants 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024) Sana Shahmuradova Tanska

Sana Shahmuradova Tanska

Left to right: Adebunmi Gbadebo, Adam, 2023. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from Terra Foundation of American Art Courtesy the artist and Nicola Vassell Gallery © Adebunmi Gbadebo. Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Untitled, 2023; Homesickness (Stork), 2022; Fell asleep at the river shore in 2022, 2022. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery © Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Artspace. Photograph: Document Photography.

Sana Shahmuradova Tanska is a painter from Odesa, Ukraine, currently based in Kyiv. A significant part of her childhood was spent in the countryside in the Podillia region in Ukraine. Shahmuradova Tanska’s practice is focused on paintings and graphics where she explores her roots, using trauma as a method of communicating with ancestors. Her practice typically involves oil on various surfaces, as well as watercolours on paper. Recent works highlight atrocities and violation of nature and inhabitants committed by the aggressor, with an emphasis on the similarity of brain activity while visualising both future and past. The time distance between past traumatic events and the present has suddenly disappeared.

Shahmuradova Tanska, Counteroffensive, 2022; Apocalypse Survivors #7 (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023; Don’t Touch My Circles They Don’t Belong to You, 2023. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery © Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Artspace. Photograph: Document Photography.

Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Apocalypse Survivors #1 (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023; Apocalypse Survivors Fish (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023; Apocalypse Survivors #6 (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery © Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Artspace. Photograph: Document Photography.

Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Fiery Harvest, 2023; Tired Sun, 2023. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery © Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Artspace. Photograph: Document Photography.

Left to right: Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, selection from Apocalypse Survivors #5 (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023 (detail); Scorching Sun, Melting memories (watercolour series), 2023 (detail).

Sana Shahmuradova Tanska, Apocalypse Survivors #2 (from Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery © Sana Shahmuradova Tanska. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Artspace. Photograph: Document Photography.

Photo: Daria Svertilova. In Kyiv, blackouts of winter 2022-23. Courtesy of the artist.

Artspace

Apocalypse Survivors #3 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023

Counteroffensive, 2022

Apocalypse Survivors #7 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023

Don’t Touch My Circles They Don’t Belong to You, 2023

Fiery Harvest, 2023

Tired Sun, Delayed Sowing, Faithful Sheep, 2022

Untitled, 2023

Praying for September, 2022

Apocalypse Survivors #2 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023

Fell asleep at the river shore in 2022, 2022

Homesickness. (Stork), 2022

Untitled, 2023

War Widow, 2023

Apocalypse Survivors #6 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants), 2023

Apocalypse Survivors, The Last Fish (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023

Apocalypse Survivors #1 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023

oil on canvas

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney
Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery

Apocalypse Survivors #5 (from the Tethys Sea Inhabitants series), 2023
oil on paper

Scorching Sun, Melting memories (watercolour series), 2023
watercolour on paper

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with assistance from the Consulate General of Canada, Sydney
Courtesy the artist and Gunia Nowik Gallery

After spending seven years in Canada, Sana Shahmuradova Tanska returned to Ukraine in 2020, to live and paint from Kyiv, amidst a country in war. Rendered in oil paint, watercolour and pastel, the poetry and pain of intergenerational trauma floats across a war zone on an ocean of colour. Drawing on Ukrainian history and folklore for inspiration, Shahmuradova Tanska’s dreamy figures inhabit a molten landscape of collective memory, grief and violence.

In the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – a continuation of a much longer history of occupation, deportation, killings, man-made famines, and cultural oppression – like a pebble thrown in still water, with each ringed ripple an echo of the one that came before it, Shahmuradova Tanska believes the distance between past and present traumas is collapsing.

In the Those who survived the apocalypse/ The inhabitants of the Tethys series the artist considers The Black Sea as a site of both connection and destruction. Like the limestone that surrounds it, the region’s history is constantly undergoing erosion, environmental, colonial and cultural. Much the same way small shells remain, present in limestone dams and caves, so too are stories preserved.

Created between shelling attacks, which sent Shahmuradova Tanska to Cold War shelters plastered with old atomic war posters, these paintings stand as a testament to a people who have been pummeled by waves of occupation and invasion but remain as steadfast as the tide.