Lidia Borysenko Is Changing Our Idea Of Embroidery

Lidia Borysenko is an interesting conversationalist. She is intelligent and looks younger than her years. It is strange to read her considerable “service record”, which for an artist means participation in exhibits. Lidia has taken part in about 20 exhibits, but only the most notable and significant ones. It all started in 1986 with the All-Union Youth Exhibition in Moscow (a reminder: these exhibitions were open only to the best artists, who got a nice start in art there). But this is only the public side of her biography. For the past 20 years Lidia Borysenko has been creating monumental textile works, mainly Gobelins. The artist also does embroidery, batiks, drawings, and paintings. The secret of her success is the combination of ancient traditions and modern ways of conveying her ideas, which is now the most important trend in the world of decorative art. The originality of Borysenko’s Gobelins lies in her understanding of both Europe’s experience of creating these kinds of tapestries and Ukrainian traditions of weaving and painting.

Lidia Borysenko says: “It usually takes about a year or year and a half for me to produce a Gobelin. It is very painstaking work that demands total devotion from an artist. Along the way new images and compositions crop up that I have to discard in favor of the original idea. However, these images don’t vanish but sort of demand: ‘Bring us to life.’ Over the years I have gathered a lot of these ideas. So I decided to turn to painting and graphics to realize them.”

“Variations,” the first exhibit of Borysenko’s works in this medium, is drawing to a close in Gallery Foxtrot on Andriivsky Uzviz Street. The form of these works is so unusual that the artist calls this exhibit “post-embroidery syndrome.” Using pictorial methods, she has created the illusion of embroidery in some works, while in others she uses elements of embroidery. It makes a stunning impression. These works practically radiate warmth and make the viewer want to touch them. This effect is created mostly through the artist’s masterful work with the materials. She often uses handmade paper (Lidia is currently using Indian-made paper but plans to make some herself) or flax (mainly of Ukrainian origin) on which she “paints” her textiles.

Lidia Borysenko says that the idea behind her works is the eternal quest for harmony of Heaven and Earth in a human being. They contain an infinite number of signs and symbols that are very interesting to read and hear. In particular, her graphics are governed by a strict rhythm, but at the same time they create a sensation of weightlessness. Perhaps the reason for this is that in her youth Lidia Borysenko hesitated for a long time about whether she should become an artist or musician (she studied at a music school and graduated from the Republican Art School). Even though she finally decided to become an artist, music still plays inside her.