Window of Hope

Clamshell portfolio with 6 original woodcuts. Printed August & September 2022 in Berlin. Edition of 40 as an artist’s book & 40 as a portfolio, by Hendrik Liersch and Olesya Dzhurayeva, Corvinus Presse, Berlin. The portfolio was printed on Velin BFK Rives, France. Cover paper: Billter Chocolate, United Kingdom. Bound by hand by Stefan Cseh, Forchheim, Germany. Sheet sizes: 10 ⅞ x 16 ⅜ inches. To see the whole portfolio, including the artist's thoughts as she was creating these prints in exile, click this link to a fully illustrated pdf. Notes: At the onset of the war in Ukraine, Olesya Dzhurayeva who is married and has two daughters, fled Kyiv with great haste, to avoid the risk of being caught up in Russian aggression. Because her husband, who like all fighting-age men is not allowed to leave Ukraine, she and her family settled for a few weeks in a rural area away from the fighting. Confronted with idleness at this time of fear and despair, the artist turned to printmaking for solace. Unable to turn to her usual tools, Dzhurayeva made do with what she could find: crude planks of wood; a chisel, a hammer, and flathead screwdriver for carving; a spoon and soil for printing. These rudimentary instruments forced her to greatly adapt her technique and aesthetic. The 6 images of hope and despair that came out of her hands at that time are poignant visual translations of an artist’s response to the madness of war. The soil prints, which are extremely fragile, were made into printmaking inks by Corvinus Presse, Berlin this past summer and fall. This is the portfolio that resulted from it.