THE GALLERY is pleased to announce Ola Rondiak: Women’s history, a hundred years of Ukraine curated by Kyoko Sato. The exhibition is including her recent drawings and collage works subjected to Ukraine, women, history and tradition.

In the days preceding the Russian invasion of her country on February 19, 2022, Ola Rondiak was protesting outside of the United Nations’ New York Headquarters. The next day, she was in Washington D.C. with the same battle cry: "Peace for Ukraine". Anxious and terrified, Rondiak was rallying not only for her country, but for her husband, Petro, who was residing in the capital, Kyiv, at the time. In the days that followed, her family’s reunion remained precarious at best, threatened by the onset of war.

Russian military forces are upheaving Rondiak’s family, but this wouldn’t be the first time. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during World War II left her maternal grandmother Paraskevia Michniak alone to care for her sick daughter while her family fled to western Europe. On March 28th, 1947, the NKVD arrested Paraskevia, charged her with collusion, and sentenced her to 25 years of hard labor at the Women’s Strict Regime Prison in Mordovia, Russia. According to Rondiak, Paraskevia found solace in handicraft.

Although often confined to the home, handicrafts, like the women who have made them, nurture their families. By extension, their countries as well. In Ola Rondiak’s case, the brush is her needle, and paint is her work – a silent protest of war and a tool for personal and cultural sustenance for future generations. One after the other, Rondiak paints Ukrainian female figures – a dynamic, repetitive motion that re-affirms the preservation of her cultural heritage. One day, she dreams of building a cultural center and exhibit in Kyiv to uphold the collective Ukrainian memory through art. Until then, her practice will continue its ritualistic protest for peace from abroad.