Hi, I'm MonaLisa / MonaLisa's Diary

This ongoing installation brings together a living potted flower and a fictional diary as interconnected forms of testimony. At its centre is a purple iris rescued from the ruins of the Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Academy of Decorative Applied Arts and Design after the building was destroyed by a Russian missile in 2024. Placed in a pot, the flower exists as a fragile yet persistent presence, carrying a material trace of violence while continuing to live in a state of displacement.

Alongside it, MonaLisa's Diary unfolds as a handwritten and embroidered narrative on handmade paper. Written from the perspective of the flower, the diary traces uprooting, survival, and movement across borders as metaphors for exile, memory, and the burden of witnessing war. Red cotton thread runs through the pages like sutures, turning writing into a bodily act and allowing personal experience to intersect with collective trauma.

Together, the potted flower and the diary form a quiet installation reflecting on forced displacement, historical continuity, and the conditions of contemporary life shaped by war. Speaking through the language of nature rather than direct documentation, the work transforms destruction into remembrance. It invites viewers to consider fragility, continuity, and the question of how identity and meaning are carried forward when familiar structures collapse and the future remains uncertain.