The series Witnesses was created for the Lviv Shum Art Gallery in late 2024 to early 2025 by Kateryna Kosianenko. For the exhibition, the artist added a few older paintings from 2022-2023 that coincide entirely with the aesthetics of the new series. Currently, the war in Ukraine continues to rage, and as the events start to repeat themselves and become more complex and multilayered, the artistic vision of them carries a new complexity and interpretation.

     The new series is a collage essay in which heavenly and earthly coexist and blend into each other, where the routine of daily life intertwines with sacrality, where holiness faces sin, and tragedy and happiness live side-by-side. Angels and Saints are painted without nimbi in these series, although they are bestowed with the traditional iconographic elements. The paintings are not icons but reflections of our daily existence at these difficult times. 

     The cities painted in this series are rather abstract: urban landscapes of the standard panel high-rises in the newer districts and the downtown historical buildings can be seen anywhere in Ukraine. We also see people whom the war turned into saints and angels, people we often pass on the street without noticing. Some explanations are necessary to understand better the artistic concept regarding the iconographic lore or reality in Witnesses. Kateryna's art may be interpreted in many ways: every viewer may find something close to his heart in her paintings. In understanding her paintings, attention to detail is crucial. A true artist is never a passive observer; she contemplates and transforms characters into a new, imagined reality. She paints events that are impossible to ignore, slivers of life that together reflect our existence in the Ukrainian present. It is not our goal to explain literally