The Land We Carry. Artistic-community project at Jam Factory Art Center. 2025
Residency theme and local background
This year’s Magic Carpets project was built around two socio-cultural practices: gardening and cooking, approached through the lens of artistic practice. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine has resulted in lost, abandoned and mined lands across occupied, de-occupied and frontline territories. Since 2014, thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes. Many have found ways to cope with this loss by “reproducing” home in new places: through seedlings and gardening, which literally recreate familiar environments, or through cooking and shared meals as performative acts that evoke memory through smell and taste. Family recipes, seasonal celebrations and regional specialities allow cultural heritage and memory of Ukraine’s regions and national communities to surface, including those of Crimean Tatars, who were forced to leave Crimea after 2014.
Within this project, we sought to explore the therapeutic potential of gardening and working with soil and plants, while collecting stories from people whose displacement took place between 2014 and 2025. We also aimed to reactivate community gatherings and traditional celebrations, which may be stigmatised in a country living through war and collective loss, yet still hold the potential to function as healing tools.
Timeline of the residency
1.04–30.04 – Selection of artists
1–14.05 – Online meeting with all three artists, curator and residency manager
22–30.05 – Research trip to Lviv: visiting Jam Factory, meeting potential partners, brainstorming activities and developing the residency plan
1.07–17.07 and 29.07–11.08 – Residency periods for all three artists (active offline phase at Jam Factory)
12.08–30.11 – Post-production of artworks
29.11–11.01 – Exhibition of the project’s results at Jam Factory
Participating artists
Diana Khalilova is an artist born in Dagestan who spent most of her youth in Dnipro. She graduated from the State University of Food Technologies in Kyiv and worked as a cook in various institutions in Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa. In 2020, she began her artistic practice, working with clay, video, food and other media. Some of her works focus on ethnic identity, particularly the Rutul culture and language to which her family belongs. Since 2022, she has led the “Community Kitchen” programme at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Dnipro, combining collective cooking with conversations about food as an integral part of culture and memory. Between 2022 and 2025, she participated in collective exhibitions in Ukraine and Romania.
Iryna Loskot is a multidisciplinary artist from Kharkiv. She graduated from the Kharkiv National University of Arts named after I. Kotlyarevsky with a degree in puppet theatre acting. She lives in Kyiv and works with objects, video and performance. Her practice explores interactions between humans and non-humans and their political entanglements. She investigates the agency of non-humans, the adaptation of environments, the militarisation of “nature” and the naturalisation of war, approaching these themes through an anthropocentric lens that blurs boundaries between human and non-human experience.
Lilia Petrova is an artist from Kharkiv who graduated from the Kharkiv Academy of Design and Arts with a degree in book graphics. She works with drawing, graphics and ceramics. Through drawing, she explores the interaction between verbal and visual languages, creating a personal graphic universe populated by naïve creatures confronting difficult and absurd life situations. In her ceramic practice, she draws on folk art traditions as examples of sincerity and directness in creativity. She has also been involved in alternative art education, teaching “Drawing and Plastic Art” at the Kharkiv School of Architecture. Lilia views art as an accessible, supportive tool that can outline spaces for reflection, living and communication.
The community
This year, the project was conceived as a community-building initiative, inviting people of different ages, backgrounds and life experiences who share an interest in gardening and cooking. An open call invited applicants to reflect on family recipes, memories of gardens and relationships with plants. Applications were collected through an online form, printed posters and direct outreach to centres for internally displaced people in Lviv. We received 130 applications. In order to create a trusting space and work closely with personal stories, the group was limited to 20 participants. Most participants were internally displaced people who have lived in Lviv since 2022.
Anastasiia Sierikova (35, from Sumy, writer and editor)
Andrii Holdaiev (45, from Kyiv, IT specialist)
Anna Koshel (48, from New York village, Donetsk region)
Anna Kurnatska (48, from Zaporizhia, communications manager in an NGO)
Halyna Vorona (65, from Pryazovske village, Zaporizhia region, maths teacher)
Hanna Varshavska (28, from Odesa, designer)
Daniela Hrytsak (31, from Uzhhorod)
Diana Horban (29, from Kolomyia, singer)
Yarysia Makiievska (34, from Dnipro region, tour guide)
Karina Dovhan (31, from Mykolaiv region, chef)
Mariia Krykun (24, from Kryvyi Rih)
Nadiia Noskova (36, from Kharkiv)
Olha Kamisarova (67, from Melitopol, library worker)
Olha Kis (39, from Lviv, pharmacist)
Olha Niesterkova (29, from Odesa, architect)
Sofiia Hrynevych (22, from Kyiv region, art historian)
Yuliia Dudnieva (55, from Kharkiv, university professor)
Yurii Pryima (29, from Lviv region, IT specialist)
Yaroslava Katsedan (70, from Kakhovka)
Meetings with the community
The programme included introductory meetings, artist presentations and a community kitchen session titled “The meal that brings us back home”, focused on traditional dishes of Odesa’s Greek community and Crimean Tatar cuisine, led by Diana Khalilova. Further activities included a performative “workout” focused on body and perception led by Iryna Loskot, a drawing workshop titled “What will the grain grow into?” led by Lilia Petrova, walks in Znesinnia Park to collect local clay, ceramic workshops introducing clay techniques and tableware production, visits to a local community garden NGO, collective gardening sessions, the creation of a public flowerbed at Jam Factory, and a final community dinner reflecting on how participants wished to remain connected after the programme’s conclusion.
Methods and formats
Methods included check-ins and check-outs, active listening, storytelling and the introduction of communication norms such as “I-messages”. Formats ranged from drawing and ceramics workshops to small-group work, community kitchens and performative exercises.
Partners
NGO Somatic Experiencing provided psychological training and facilitation for trauma-aware practice, offering six online sessions for the artists, curator and residency manager. NGO Rozsadnyk contributed through its community garden in Lviv, supporting eco-awareness activities and therapeutic gardening practices.
Outcomes
“Table Set: Memories and Fictions” by Lilia Petrova and Diana Khalilova, an installation of 95 ceramic objects.
Spilnyi kvitnyk (Community Flowerbed) by Iryna Loskot and Diana Khalilova, a permanent installation in the Jam Factory courtyard, accompanied by an audio work featuring participants speaking about the planted species.
Recipe book The Land We Carry by Lilia Petrova, Olena Kasperovych, Iryna Loskot and Diana Khalilova, a 124-page A5 publication containing family recipes and plant stories illustrated by Lilia Petrova, alongside reflective texts by the artists and a curatorial introduction.
“Repetition before the Workout”, an audio work by Iryna Loskot offering oral instructions for performative exercises.
Interactive exhibition The Land We Carry at Jam Factory Art Center (29.11.2025–11.01.2026), accompanied by a public programme including community kitchens, performative workouts, drawing workshops and curatorial tours.
In conclusion
In a time marked by daily tragedy and loss, celebration may seem difficult to imagine. Yet gathering around a table is not only about joy; it is also about mutual support and the possibility of coming together. Participants’ stories about family recipes, seasonal rituals and local dishes offered new ways of understanding the cultural heritage and memory of Ukraine’s regions and national communities.
Through co-creation with artists, generous images of home and land resurfaced within the collective memory of this small community. Through conversation, movement and drawing, what had long been forgotten was gently retrieved, and what once seemed unimportant regained its significance.
Curatorial text by Olena Kasperovych