DARINA MYKYTIUK : The Art of Transformation and Freedom of Expression

Darina Mykytiuk (b. Ukraine, lives and works in Germany)

Darina Mykytiuk explores the intersections of femininity, emotional intelligence and contemporary pop sensibility. Her work is an ongoing investigation into female identity, sensuality, ritual, memory and psychological vulnerability, approached through a highly personal visual language rooted in both intimacy and irony.

Working primarily with tempera, Mykytiuk employs a rare material sensitivity that reflects her focus on tactility and process. Her surfaces are layered, assertive and yet emotionally porous, echoing the tension between strength and softness that defines her aesthetic. Color in her work is not illustrative but experiential; it conveys emotion, states of mind and sensory memories. The act of painting for her is not merely expressive but reflective and systematic, a disciplined practice of turning inner perception into visual rhythm.

A recurring feature of her practice is the subtle use of humor and linguistic play. Many of her works carry titles with ironic or witty undertones, anchoring profound emotional content in sharp conceptual clarity. Her compositions often center on the female figure as archive, as landscape and as an agent of transformation, creating space for narratives of migration, loss, tenderness and self-reinvention.

Themes such as intimate resistance, sensuality without permission, the emotional architecture of womanhood and the domestic as a site of radical presence are not merely conceptual frameworks for Mykytiuk; they emerge from lived experience, channelled into a deeply visual and physical practice.

Her work can be situated within a lineage of women artists who challenge the separation between the political and the personal, the intellectual and the intuitive. Drawing inspiration from figures like Marina Abramović, Louise Bourgeois and Andy Warhol, whose aesthetics she refracts through a feminist lens, Mykytiuk positions herself as a voice of contemporary femininity in flux, both culturally grounded and emotionally raw.

Currently based in Hamburg, Darina Mykytiuk creates from within a hybrid identity shaped by displacement, motherhood and a powerful sense of inner sovereignty. Her studio practice is both a sanctuary and a statement: art is not a product but a field of emotional transmission. Her latest series reclaims color, form and emotional directness as acts of authorship and autonomy, offering collectors and institutions not just visual works but touchpoints for deeper cultural conversations.