Sana Shahmuradova Tanska
Born 1996 in Odesa, Ukraine
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
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.
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.
Read more about the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, by purchasing the catalogue here.