Painting by Yuliia Holub

Two realities coexist on the canvases, constantly affecting one another. The first is the human and the mirror. Only the socially acceptable part is reflected there - what the world is ready to see. The mirror becomes the external world and its reaction to us. Searching for oneself solely through the mirror is dangerous: it can be distorted, dependent on who surrounds us, on context, on social expectations. The second reality is the human within the body - amid the elements, chaos, and the unconscious. Here, presence is not defined by the world’s reaction; the body speaks for itself, and the boundaries of the subject dissolve. It is a space of the irrational, where a living presence exists beyond social norms but remains fundamental to being. The flame in the series does not symbolize enlightenment. It illuminates the border between the self and its copy, between living presence and simulated image. Self-knowledge becomes possible only when the illusion of the “authentic self” is abandoned and duality is accepted: the human within nature and its absence within the mirror. The series offers no final answer but a neuroplastic path of synthesis - a constant process of living and adapting, of interacting with the changing boundaries of reality.