Lesia Synychenko on The Morphing, Ukrainian War Art, Memory, and Transformation

Lesia Synychenko is a Ukrainian artist, poet, and former journalist whose practice combines painting, graphic art, poetry, diary writing, and mixed media. In Morphing, begun in autumn 2021 and continued after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, she explores transformation, fear, home, women, animals, memory, and war. Working with acrylic, ink, watercolor, collage, and layered techniques, she develops an intimate visual language in which dogs, birds, cats, fish, flowers, and domestic spaces become carriers of memory, vulnerability, attachment, and survival. Her work draws on Chernihiv, Ukrainian cultural inheritance, everyday observation, and the experience of living through war.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Lesia Synychenko discuss Morphing, a poetic mixed-media project that began before Russia’s full-scale invasion and deepened through Synychenko’s wartime experience in Chernihiv. She explains how image and text emerge together, often through recurring figures of women, animals, home, and landscape, and how those symbols acquired new meanings after the invasion. The conversation moves through artistic intuition, journalism, translation, Ukrainian cultural memory, animal fear, grief, and the psychological burden of war, showing how private imagery can become a form of testimony, cultural memory, and survival.

Lesia Synychenko: I want to present this project, Morphing. It is about transformation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is one of the newer projects?

Synychenko: Yes. I started working on it in autumn 2021, before the full-scale invasion, and I continued it in 2022, when the invasion began. This project is very important to me. I can send you the concept.

Jacobsen: That would help get the description down.

Synychenko: I have presented this project in Lithuania, Finland, and Ukraine. All of these works also have English translations.

Jacobsen: Yes. It is poetry.

Synychenko: Yes. It is poetry and diary. There are works about fires and darkness. When I arrived in Chernihiv, I continued this project throughout 2022.

Jacobsen: So, 2022.

Synychenko: Yes. This work is from 2022. It is also about my dog, because I was in Chernihiv, and it was very scary. Planes flew over the city all the time, and there was bombing. My dog and I hugged each other all the time because it was very frightening. My dog helped me, and I helped my dog.

Jacobsen: [Reading from the art series pieces] “Your strength is in the cold, wet nose of your dog.”

Synychenko: Yes, because it is a very pretty, cold, wet nose. This is also about a victim.

Jacobsen: A victim of the war. “A live target is a temporary concept.” Wow.

Synychenko: This is very personal to me. It is also in a book from the Scottish PEN Centre. It was published in Ukraine, in Ukrainian and English. Right now, it is only available online. It is a diary by Ukrainian poets, artists, and other people, including me, with some of my poetry. And this is a postcard. These are also books with my works. This is Angel and the Keep. This is another project. These works are from autumn 2021. I felt very strange. I felt something bright, but I did not understand it. I was not thinking about war, but inside me there was a very strong, bright feeling.

Jacobsen: Artists are sensitive. People who are more mainstream can be sensitive too, but artists, in my experience, are especially sensitive. They process the world differently, and this is how they express it. You said you felt strange. You are using autumn colors, but then you introduce purple. There are elements here that suggest many things.

Synychenko: These are works for viewing and reading.

Jacobsen: For the painting? Or both?

Synychenko: Both, yes.

Jacobsen: What materials do you use? How do you make the paint? Do you make it yourself, or do you buy it? What colors do you use?

Synychenko: This is acrylic paint, and sometimes I use ink for small details. This is from my exhibition at the ICA Gallery, maybe only in Ukrainian. I do not know where it is in English.

Jacobsen: That refers to when they were made?

Synychenko: Yes. It was a solo exhibition. No, I do not remember exactly.

Jacobsen: What creature is this, the green-blue one?

Synychenko: These are strange animals. This is from 2021. It reflects how I was thinking.

Jacobsen: This… somehow, this tangle of feelings is called silence. I love that, because that is very true. Who has not had an experience of heartbreak, loss, or even a small victory, and then had a few minutes, or half a day, of quiet in a park? Sometimes the quietest moments are emotionally the loudest, because everything is happening inside. Do you have digital versions of these? Do you have pictures?

Synychenko: Online?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Synychenko: Yes, I will send them to you. I am also creating a poetry book with these illustrations. It is only in Ukrainian, but I have some poetry in English as well. If you want, I can send that too.

Jacobsen: If you would like, we could do a video together where you present them and I read the poetry in English. That could be fun, like a YouTube clip or something like that. I think that would be very good. Oh, is this the same creature?

Synychenko: Yes.

Jacobsen: What is this creature? Is it elongated?

Synychenko: Yes, I do not know. It is very strange, because after the war started I showed you some works, maybe some of these. No, this is new work, but this project feels very strange to me. It is really very new. Maybe it is a lion that loves to fly. It is about Venice, the lion that flies, like the birds. No, this idea goes back to 1990.

Jacobsen: 1990. Yes.

Synychenko: But after the war started, and even before, I did not know where this image came from. I think maybe it is about…

Jacobsen: Now, this is clearly a creature. A cat?

Synychenko: A cat, but not a simple cat.

Jacobsen: In dark times, hope is a small cat. Cats are very interesting.

Synychenko: Yes. I created this in 2021, not 2022. It is very strange, because I was not thinking about hope. But now, looking at it, I see that feeling reflected in it.

Jacobsen: Now, this is a very sophisticated piece, the layering. Very sophisticated.

Synychenko: I like this because I combine many techniques.

Jacobsen: It looks like a stamp. A square brush?

Synychenko: It is a technique. You cut into the paper, and—

Jacobsen: And then you press around it. Yes. So you did the same here, and then you added more over it.

Synychenko: Yes, and then it looks like another layer.

Jacobsen: And then you added small strokes here, for the home.

Synychenko: Yes, that is ink.

Jacobsen: I very much like this piece. “One does not know that you love him,” 2021. So this is unrequited love?

Synychenko: Yes.

Jacobsen: Everyone has been there.

Synychenko: Once or twice?

Jacobsen: Twice. Except maybe someone like 007.

Synychenko: Yes. But this is not only about that. This is also… I do not remember this book exactly. It was for [unclear]. At that time, it was not about me. But the next works are really about me. It is very strange.

Jacobsen: This one is: “For me, you are a warm dwelling.”

Synychenko: “Home.” I did not say it exactly like that. My translator lives in London.

Jacobsen: There is a London feeling here. The contrast creates that effect.

Synychenko: Because I translated it as “home,” but she said the word is a little different, more nuanced.

Jacobsen: Is this a princess on a horse? “Every woman is also a bird.” Every woman is also a bird at the same time. Birds fly away. They want to spread their wings.

Synychenko: Because every woman is also… I have other words. Every woman is also… a fish. I do not remember the word. Rusalka, a woman without legs, like a fish. A mermaid. So this is a bird. And this… maybe this one has no translation… “Forward forever.” It is very interesting.

Jacobsen: Because your images are not exactly straightforward.

Synychenko: “Forward and forever,” yes.

Jacobsen: “Forward and forever,” yes. I feel there is written text, and it is straightforward. But then, like graffiti, the letters are there, but they merge together. In your art, among the different styles, one thing I notice is the presence of animals. But they are not quite normally shaped. They merge with the environment. It is very interesting how that works.

Synychenko: Yes. When I work on this project, the painting and the text come together. I do not paint first and then think. It happens all at once.

Jacobsen: It is all in one, yes. In English, we call it “stream of consciousness.” The mind is like a river. So everything flows together.

Synychenko: Yes. When I began this in 2021, I spent a lot of time walking in Volodymyrskyi Park, near the trees, near the woods. For me, this was a very important experience. I walked without thinking about anything. And when I stopped thinking about everything, I began to feel something else, something more important. It was very interesting.

Jacobsen: Yes. And this, “conditional victim.” You translate it as “conditional victim.” What does that mean?

Synychenko: It is about a condition. It is not fixed. What is “conditional”? We do not know. This is a victim, or maybe not a victim. It is uncertain. Maybe I am the victim. Maybe he or she is. Because now, anyone can be—

Jacobsen: So, in a way, anyone in the war can be a victim.

Synychenko: Yes.

Jacobsen: Ultimately, there are no real winners in war. Economies suffer. People die.

Synychenko: Yes. And maybe… it is a very interesting idea. Because now I know I am not a victim. I do not feel like a victim.

Jacobsen: You do not feel like a victim.

Synychenko: Yes. But this can change. When I was in Chernihiv, I was very scared. I did not feel human. I felt like my dog, because animals experience fear in this way. It was not human fear. It was animal fear. Humans feel fear too, yes, but in that moment it was something more basic.

Jacobsen: Animal behavior does not pretend. Animals show fear very directly.

Synychenko: This is after Bucha. This is very—

Jacobsen: “Every woman is a doll for someone’s empty eyes.” Very interesting. The idea of empty eyes has appeared in other Ukrainian art as well, like that statue of the girl with hollow eyes, about a twenty-minute walk from the Mother Ukraine Monument. Have you seen that?

Synychenko: Yes.

Jacobsen: Near the main art gallery. So, “every woman is a doll for someone’s empty eyes.” That rings true. There are many similarities in how people express themselves across cultures. But here, I find people express themselves more through the eyes than where I am from. I have to be mindful of that. Nonverbal communication often happens through the eyes. So, every woman is a doll. This is a very beautiful composition. The idea is that women are, in some sense, made into objects.

Synychenko: And this is also some kind of animal, or feathers.

Jacobsen: Yes, yes, a bird.

Synychenko: And she… this may be a child.

Jacobsen: A child. So the bird protects. The bird flies. The bird can also become a doll.

Synychenko: This is about a lullaby. A lullaby. It is important because it is like a song you learn as a child, something from school, something you grow up with.

Jacobsen: It feels almost like a folk scene. But it is based on a song?

Synychenko: Yes. It is about something enduring, something that continues.

Jacobsen: “Even the waves sway the fish from your dreams.” Yes, yes. A small headdress and a flower, and the blue hair, like waves. I see more here, a black cat. Or a black-and-green cat.

Synychenko: Yes. You read it, and I understand.

Jacobsen: “The killer has the right to leave the remainder.” The cat is unwanted.

Synychenko: Yes, because many Russians killed pets, cats and dogs. These animals…

Jacobsen: I spoke with someone involved in animal rescue, a volunteer working on the ground. They told me there were at least several hundred thousand abandoned animals, dogs and cats, and that situations become very difficult. Dogs may attack cats. Sometimes pigs will eat human remains. So rescuers face strange and disturbing realities. When they encounter an animal, they have to consider what it has experienced. War reduces everything.

Synychenko: This is also from 2021. It is very strange because it reminds me of a children’s game. You may know it, when children run and say, “I am at home, I am at home.” When we went to the shelter, I remembered this.

Jacobsen: And this one is a garden, obviously.

Synychenko: This is a diptych, this and this.

Jacobsen: So, a circle around an arch. My thoughts… a diptych. What is a diptych?

Synychenko: A diptych means two works together.

Jacobsen: A diptych. A circle around a circle, my thoughts. Yes. I like the use of gold. I like this. I used to garden with retired women, so this feels familiar.

Synychenko: This is also a reflection of—

Jacobsen: The classic Ukrainian hairstyle, yes, around the ear and down to about the chest. “These sharp triangles of pain are with us forever.” I asked several veterans in rehabilitation whether those who experienced frontline trauma ever fully recover. Everyone I asked told me no.

Synychenko: No.

Jacobsen: With some qualification, they improve, but they do not fully recover. That seems realistic.

Synychenko: Yes. I think when you are on the front line, you are constantly acting. You cannot think. Only sometimes, if you have time, do you begin to think.

Jacobsen: I also think many of them are sleep-deprived. They get very little sleep. Tired, tired, tired. Without sleep, people—

Synychenko: Yes.

Jacobsen: “The first words I say in the morning in March are the names of my friends: Iro, Ino, Masha, Natasha, Sasha.”

Synychenko: Yes. This is about my friend who stayed in Chernihiv for her son. I was very worried about them. But one of my friends in Chernihiv died, my friend Artem.

Jacobsen: “Every woman is a bit like a fish without wings.”

Synychenko: Yes. When I started this project, at the beginning I was thinking about women, about how women exist in this very strange world.

Jacobsen: Especially when so many men have left, gone to fight, died, or are hiding. “Now my treehouse is closer to birds than to women.”

Synychenko: Yes, this is about people who—

Jacobsen: If I may, women are women, women are fish, women are dolls, women are birds.

Synychenko: Yes. In Lithuania, there is a very interesting idea, something like saints. Not God exactly, but symbolic figures. These birds, these women. But women are not cats.

Jacobsen: Yes, not cats.

Synychenko: Cats are different. There is a well-known phrase by a British writer: cats in ancient Egypt were worshipped as gods.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Synychenko: They have not forgotten.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Lesia.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a blogger on Vocal with more than 200 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing, comprising more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications across more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.

Image Credit: Scott Douglas Jacobsen.