"Eclipse"
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Total Eclipse is about the darkness that envelops our lands now. The darkness in which pain, suffering, doubts and hopes are mixed. To ancient people, a solar eclipse seemed like the end of the world, the punishment of the gods. The finality of this natural phenomenon was not always realized.

Anastasiia Kolibaba's monochromes, almost grisailles, reflect the state of uncertainty of time - whether it is dusk or dawn. We seem to be stuck in this brief moment between day and night, when colors fade and almost disappear. The signposts are faded, and the landmarks are confused. Or maybe it's a new reality we've found ourselves in and we're already starting to get used to it.

For more than two years of the full-scale war, artists have been reacting in different ways to the tragic events of the first days of the invasion and the terrible massive shellings, as well as to the experience of occupation. The artistic statement is formed both at the level of direct expressive reactions to today's events and in the form of searching for answers in the past that preceded the war.

Of particular importance is the figure of a Military who heroically defends his country, who is in the most difficult conditions of real war, and who is filled with this painful experience for months and years. The "Eclipse" project consists of two aspects. Firstly, it is a quiet ode to gratitude and pain for those who are at the frontline. Those who are forced to give up their usual life with their loved ones, protecting themselves and all of us. The images of the soldiers seem to be captured by a documentary filmmaker's lens.

"The almost documentary style of the narrative captures the moment in time, while this landscape, full of battles and military life, feels so significant", the author says.

But for all the authenticity and, moreover, the mundanity of the moment captured on canvas or paper, the sense of mysticism of what is happening does not disappear. In every step, turn of the head or silhouette of a cannon, a certain hidden pattern is read.
In parallel to the daily experiences of war that have become commonplace and seem to be devoid of meaning and clear purpose, the leitmotif is the almost biblical struggle against evil, despite the seeming banality of the latter. A person who defends his or her country today is a hero. At the same time, the hero is alive, not bronze. A hero who seems to be peeped on.
It is difficult to find this boundary - a real contemporary hero and at the same time, not a character (from a propaganda poster), but a personality.

Anastasiia Kolibaba's paintings are complex and multilayered. The figures of the soldiers, their faces change in the process of painting - sometimes resembling documentary photographs with their random, not staged poses, gestures, facial expressions, sometimes they almost acquire the features of ancient marble heroes.

Such a blurred image, vagueness, a certain lack of focus is an accurate form of embodying the image of war, where a simple, sometimes unmanifested person can turn out to be a hero, withstanding inhuman loads.

The technique of painting itself adapts to the difficult artistic task of embodying the image of a warrior without burdening it with clichéd features and excessive pretentiousness. An antique statue with limbs lost over time, supported by a crutch, stands, carrying its strength and fortitude through the millennia. It serves as a certain standard of a hero, solid bronze and tender defenceless flesh at the same time.

Secondly, it is the terrible cataclysms of war. A landscape torn by war expresses the pain of the earth itself. Dead cannons take root, transforming into a new bizarre landscape full of sad charm. The land is like a body, crippled and tortured by the hatred of the enemy that wants to destroy and kill.

Skulls made of fired clay, forever silenced, are artifacts of false imperial grandeur, pathetic and unconvincing, displayed as if they were samples of some poisonous substance, dirt. The image of death in art has traditionally had an important function - a reminder of the transience of life (memento mori) and, at the same time, a motivation to value this life. Russian pseudo-ideology and propaganda completely devalue life as such and glorify death.

Ashes to ashes. The clay which the first humans were made of, to clay, to the ground. Similarly, the revanchist pseudo-historical narratives of imperial propaganda look like scarecrows made of rubbish, of whatever, falling apart before our eyes, mingling with the ground. 

Zov (traslation to russian;~ calling)
A composition of three ceramic skulls. Engraving Z,O,V - the abbreviation of the Russian army, used to mark equipment, positions, etc.

Whose call exactly do you hear, what iscalling you, an imaginary past or an imaginary future? What strength do youneed to find in yourself to understand that voice? As many heads - as manyvoices, how come there is only one head for the whole mass? Light, dark, in aconfusion of sharpness - it breaks, is reborn into a frozen form, as if itwants to finally rest. The dead head remains a stone in the place where it lastfelt. It'sdark...