How to Get All the Eggs in Nutest Art Gallery
Opinion: 'Mystical, beautiful' Easter Eggs bring the resilience of Ukraine to life
Updated 0107 GMT (0907 HKT) April 17, 2022
Stephanie Griffith is an opinion editor at CNN.com. Read more opinion manufactures on CNN.
(CNN)An American-born daughter of Ukrainian refugees, Sofika Zielyk has dedicated her life to keeping the heritage of her parents' homeland alive. The artist and ethnographer specializes in creating and curating pysanky -- traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs decorated in painstaking particular, each one a dazzling gem.
The fine art of creating pysanky goes back centuries: Patterns are applied with a stylus onto an egg with melted beeswax. The egg is repeatedly dipped in colored dye as the blueprint becomes increasingly intricate. What emerges is a fragile, exquisite work of art.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin presses forward with his tearing campaign of bombarding Ukrainian towns and cities in a bid to dominate Ukraine's people and erase its civilization, Zielyk and others in the Ukrainian diaspora are embracing pysanky as more than a springtime ritual of renewal. They say it is a symbol of Ukrainian resilience, and that the country will survive.
A breadth of styles constitute in pysanky tin can be seen in the photos accompanying this commodity. An exhibit of pysanky sent to Zieklyk by Ukrainians from around the world is currently being shown at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. CNN spoke to her almost the art and the cultural significance of making pysanky. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
CNN: How did you get started creating pysanky?
Sofika Zielyk: My 2 sisters, my parents and I lived in a tiny New York apartment [when I was growing upward]. As I was falling asleep at night, I would watch my mother making pysanky. Everything was dark except the candle flame, which you lot demand in order to create these eggs because you lot take to melt the wax over the flame.
It was then mystical and so beautiful. I was almost five years old. I asked my mother if I could create a pysanky. I remember sitting on her lap, and she helped me concord the stylus. My first egg had picayune dots, lines and stars. And that'due south the way I started.
This is an extremely ancient tradition that originated in Ukraine and information technology was passed down through centuries, female parent to daughter. Pysanka is the symbol of rebirth.
I always made them during the Easter flavour, and eventually a hobby turned into a profession. When I started researching the tradition, I realized that this was but more than pretty decorated eggs. Information technology has a history of a whole nation.
CNN: What is the significance of this art form in this current moment, when Russia is attempting to destroy Ukraine's culture ?
Zielyk: Information technology has a very special significance. Right now, when at that place is attempted genocide in the country of Ukraine, my ancestral homeland, this is a very important thing to do. The egg is and so fragile and however the tradition has non left -- the tradition was non killed throughout the centuries.
The anything of Ukrainian culture has been going on for [centuries]. Whether it's the Russian Empire, whether information technology'southward the Soviet Union, or the Russian Federation, it is the aforementioned aggressor and they accept the same goal.
These eggs were started in pre-Christian times as a spring ritual to bring back the sun after a long winter. People chose an egg as a gift to the sun, because the yolk reminded them of the sun. They thought if they held the egg in the palm of their paw, they could harness a little fleck of the power of the sunday. Also, the rooster comes out of the chicken egg, and the rooster was the sun god's chosen fauna, considering when the rooster crows, the sun comes out.
So people gave the gift of an egg -- but they also included symbols of tribute and symbols of prayer in the hope that the lord's day god would grant their wishes. These heathen behavior came to be adapted to Christianity. And then it was no longer the lord's day god coming back from a long wintertime, merely the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
CNN: How did the tradition come to this country?
Zielyk: During the tardily 19th and early on 20th centuries, people emigrated to different countries from Ukraine. And then, right after World War Ii, refugees came to the United States. And ii of these refugees were my parents. I am a very proud first-generation American daughter of Ukrainian refugees. My parents and their parents fled the Nazis and the Soviets.
People were thinking that Ukraine would not exist. Or that information technology would be swallowed up by the Soviet Union -- which it was. But they connected to do their customs and traditions.
Immigrants and refugees, who came to unlike countries from Ukraine brought this tradition with them. And information technology was here in the diaspora that it was for safekeeping. And information technology was kept safe and it flourished here.
CNN: The images of destruction in Ukraine are heartbreaking. Merely you seem hopeful near its resurgence from the ruins.
Zielyk: When the war started, I was in stupor. I was in disbelief, sadness -- and and then anger gear up in and I felt like I had to do something. I realized that pysanky and cultural diplomacy is my weapon.
So I put a phone call out to social media and asked anybody who'southward of Ukrainian descent-- anybody who cares -- to create a pysanky and send information technology to the Ukrainian Found. And information technology is an installation that is constantly irresolute because more eggs are arriving every day from all over the world.
Information technology is the ancestral, primal, symbolic response to the assailant. It is our style of saying that nosotros are hither, nosotros have been here for centuries and nosotros are not going anywhere.
CNN: What will become of all of these eggs once the exhibit is over?
Zielyk: When the war ends, all the eggs that accept been coming from all over the world will be transported to Ukraine. Because the egg is a symbol of rebirth, they volition symbolically help with the rebirth.
The pysanky will be buried in the ground in all the cities that take been destroyed so that we can help with the delicate, humble all the same extremely powerful task of rebuilding.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/16/opinions/easter-eggs-ukraine-resilience-zielyk-griffith/index.html
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