Liubov Plavska / Любов Плавська (1985) spent most of her life in Kyiv and originally comes from a village near Ostroh in the west of Ukraine. She graduated with a degree in graphic design and made it her living for 17 years. Since she felt she was missing artistic expression with an intellectual dimension, after a few years of practice, she enrolled into the Lviv National Academy of Arts in Ukraine. She studied ceramics design and devoted most of her free time to it. After the first term, her university studies were interrupted by the war. In the end, she decided to shake off the uncertainty and fear instilled in her life by the Russian invasion and relocated abroad. Her journey filled with artistic ambition eventually led her to UMPRUM in Prague. After she completed her internship at UMPRUM, she could pursue a master’s degree in visual arts thanks to the support of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation.
During her studies at the Studio of Ceramics and Porcelain, she has created several artworks that present the themes of personal and collective loss or transformation of identity related to the situation in Ukraine. Currently, performative ceramics hold biggest appeal to her, but she is looking for new themes and conceptual frameworks to relate her work to. When we talked about the role of UMPRUM in her life, she stressed that it’s important to note how much the people at the school supported her in difficult moments. We met in her small apartment in Prague several days before her master’s state exams.
KATEŘINA KLÍMOVÁ’S INTERVIEW WITH LIUBOV PLAVSKA, SEPTEMBER 2024
Kateřina Klímová: Liubov, this is such a cozy home. How did you manage to find it?
Liubov Plavska: I needed a cheaper place to live at, because I had to save money for my family. I’m an older student from Ukraine, and although we respect each other, I live a bit differently than many younger Ukrainian students. Despite our age difference, we always help one another anytime anyone needs it. This apartment had originally been rented by Jaroslava, who’s currently on Erasmus, so she let me stay here even when she’s abroad. We became very close when our moms both got cancer.
KK: I’m really sorry to hear that. Did you find out your mom had cancer after you arrived in the Czech Republic?
LP: Long after I arrived in the Czech Republic. I studied at UMPRUM and I was thrilled, because after my first graduation, I worked in graphic design for 17 years. I loved my job and the fact that I was an expert, that I knew what I was doing and that a lot of people asked me for work. But in the end, I felt it wasn’t enough for me. I needed to do something artistic, express more of my thoughts and ideas.
KK: So you felt you wanted to do something more meaningful or intellectual?
LP: Yes. I really enjoyed making social issue posters. I liked to work with organizations such as the House of Crimean Tatars in Ukraine, in Kyiv. They fled Crimea when Russia annexed it. I used to make posters about all the aspects of the issue like deportation, discrimination against Crimean Tatars in their homeland, etc. Those were my favorite jobs. But making logos and all the commercial stuff did not satisfy me. So I decided I’d give it a try. I continued to work in the field, but I had enough time to study. I took exams at two art academies and passed both.
KK: Which program did you enter?
LP: Ceramics. I had already been making ceramics in the evenings. After work.
KK: So it was your hobby?
LV: Yes, it was my hobby. Music as well, but that’s a different story. I’ve always done music. But the universities – I got into both, because my English was very good compared to other applicants. My compositions weren’t perfect, but my English was good. I scored the highest in my exams. Artists in Ukraine really don’t like to learn English. They don’t see the point of doing it.
Perhaps all those students that actually learned English already moved somewhere else, but it’s not a numerous group of people. I studied at art schools among people who weren’t interested in studying anything, not just English. They just didn’t want to study. They laughed at me for sitting in a workshop all day making things out of clay. They would just smoke in the hallway or talk about personal stuff. That really frustrated me. But my teachers were nice, older generation, but really good.
I learned something. I followed up with a master's degree, did one term, took exams and then the next term started. I was extremely happy. I made the workshop at the university a cozy space, arranged cooking utensils, brought a heater in, and created a small home of sorts.
The war started and the university closed. They told me: “Take your belongings with you, because the school will close down.” I lived in the center of Lviv, so I was afraid that the Russians would come marching. I imagined they would swarm the country, because when the war started, many places in Ukraine were bombed and burned down. I don’t know why, I guess some people just burned down buildings to spread fear, to make it seem that the war is everywhere. A lot of things and objects burned to ashes, and we didn’t know why.
KK: I’m sorry, just to be clear, when you’re saying “Lviv”, do you mean “Lvov”?
LP: Yes, that’s the correct name. Lvov is a Russian name. That’s why I don’t call it Lvov. I know it’s more familiar for you, but I also don’t call Kyiv “Kiev”. I call it Kyiv. The Russian names are part of Russian propaganda. So that the world would think these are Russian cities.
KK: I think that most Czechs find these spelling differences very small and don’t even know that different pronunciation could mean that the name is either Russian or Ukrainian. Most of us have no idea we’ve been spreading Russian propaganda this way.
LP: Using that version is like spreading the notion that the city in question should return to Russia. These forms have persisted in your language from the times of the USSR. After we gained our independence, we changed them to their original Ukrainian names. But don’t worry. It’s not possible to remember everything, every city, because we made a lot of changes. However, you should be aware that it’s Russia’s colonial strategy.
KK: So if you pick the topic of colonialism at the state exams, you’ll have something to talk about.
LP: I would prefer exoticism. It’s mostly about artists who wanted to visit different countries to draw inspiration. I’ve learned a lot about Gauguin. I find that really interesting.
I also wrote a master’s thesis on how the traditional ceramics style from China emerged in Ukraine.
But when studying for state exams, I tried to focus more on ancient Greece. It’s the basis of everything we know here in Europe. So, all the topics we’re working with are somehow linked to classical Greece: philosophy, aesthetics, ideas. That was the area I studied the most.
KK: I can relate to that. You’ve mentioned that you’ve finished your master’s thesis. How did you manage to finish it in Ukraine when you were studying at UMPRUM at that time?
LP: When I came here, everything in Ukraine was strange and I didn’t want to stay underground all the time. It was useless: I wasn’t helping the army, I wasn’t helping my parents, because my parents were in the Kyiv region during the invasion. I couldn’t help them; I couldn’t help anyone. I wanted to donate blood in the hospital, but there was enough blood everywhere. So I sat in the subway, without access to any toilets, and it was weird. Eventually, when the opportunity arose, I decided I’d move somewhere in Europe.
KK: And if I understand correctly, you were in Lviv when the war started. Were you hiding somewhere from the airstrikes?
LP: Yes, I was in Lviv, because I had chosen to study at the university there. Miraculously, I was lucky I had chosen this school and not the academy in Kyiv. Otherwise I would have been in Kyiv and probably would have stayed there to be close to my parents. I probably would have joined them in the village and ended up in the middle of the invasion.
My mother, father and grandmother, who was 91 at that time, my dog, my cats and everything I loved were in a small village next to Kyiv and Russians were destroying everything around them. They were locked in the house hiding and they didn’t have much to eat. You can’t explain the feeling when you see your mother online, see the green dot on her avatar, while you don’t know whether she’s still alive. Because a Russian soldier could come any time, knock on the door and take my parents into captivity, if they opened the door. It was a very, very frustrating situation and it didn’t allow me to do anything constructive. I couldn’t sleep or eat. All I could do was talk to my mother to make sure she was still alive. You know, it's very strange. And then they survived it. Everything was fine. The house survived. They probably survived thanks to the fact the house was in the shabbiest part of the village, and it was apparent that there was nothing to steal and that no one lived there.
I don’t know what would have happened if I went to study in Kyiv. I didn’t go, because I already knew Kyiv. One of the main reasons I went to Lviv was the fact it was very close to Europe. I could easily travel abroad from there. I didn’t expect that this would give me such a big advantage during the invasion. It was much easier to flee to Europe from there. First, I went to Bratislava and stayed at a friend’s place. That’s where I finally got a good night’s sleep. But I couldn’t just stay a refugee and rely on help. I was scared and I had no status. I had to do something. I decided to find out what was going on at my university and learned that they had already set up some exchange programs for us. They offered me two universities in the Czech Republic and told me I should apply. I didn’t know anything about the Czech Republic and I couldn’t speak a word of Czech. I just showed up for the opportunity.
I considered applying to AVU, they offered very generous financial support, but there was no ceramics studio, only sculpture. That’s why I chose UMPRUM over AVU. And everything turned out well. I did my internship and then went on to study my master’s degree in English, with the financial support of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation.
KK: I can’t imagine going through all of this. And you even completed a master’s degree in Lviv? So you came back? Or what happened?
LP: After a year-long internship, the school asked me to come back. When I replied I didn’t want to live in war-time conditions, they argued they too were living in wartime, and I could live there too. But I asked them for a different arrangement, because I had already started studying for another master’s degree. And in the end, for the first time in the history of the Lviv Academy, they allowed someone to study remotely. This was made possible probably thanks to the rector, a young and innovative person.
I made it, even though I had already started my first term at UMPRUM. I had a lot of work to do and research. On top of that, I wrote 100 pages of text. And I was making ceramic plates with my super glazes. I sent the final ceramic objects to Ukraine, had my thesis printed by my friends over there and graduated cum laude in the end.
KK: And now you’re working on your UMPRUM diploma thesis?
LP: Yes. I’ve just started collecting some ideas and maybe I’ll make a little film with performative ceramics. I have some experience. For instance, that time when I made 40 apples from clay using plaster molds. I colored them and then we smashed them during the performance. I think that this is my main subject – using ceramics as a means of performance. By the end, ceramic shards were everywhere.
The destructive element was also present in my first paper presented at UMPRUM during my first internship. We had to combine traditional technique or process with a story. I was thinking about the war the whole time. In the end, I decided to reflect on the fact that my friends’ places were destroyed in the spring of 2022. It was astonishing for our society, the young generation of my age who had already started their families and had owned property; but all that was shattered, and they had to flee. I felt very sorry for the friends that had just started living with their young children, in their little houses and with small pottery studios... They built their own little worlds, which were suddenly swallowed up by destruction.
I thought of it as a subject of a certain memory. I took traditional Ukrainian ceramics from the Carpathian region that are included on the UNESCO list and used it as one of the media to express my feelings. I studied its history and learned about the related technology – its special glazes have a lead basis. The flowing glaze is the main feature I took from this traditional technique. In the final paper, I drew illustrations of houses using that glaze, so that it seemed as if the houses were disappearing, their souls floating away.
KK: And do you feel that making this kind of art is somehow therapeutic for you?
LP: Yes, I do, but I don’t want to elaborate on it. I’m attending psychotherapy sessions, I’ve been working with psychiatrists and with myself too, so I hope that I don’t have to translate all that into my art. Now, the crucial experience that I need to project into my work is my mother’s cancer.
KK: I assume that this heart-breaking diagnosis must have come shortly after you overcame the worst of the things related to war, is that right?
LP: It started with postponing my diploma thesis. I got a free year. I studied a lot: I took a lot of theoretical classes in Czech, because they go into more depth compared to the English ones. I enjoyed it so much. And then I decided I’d go see my parents for about ten days.
On the first day back in Ukraine, I called my mom and she told me that she had been diagnosed with cancer. That completely changed my plans. I decided to stay in Ukraine and do everything I could for my mom because no one else could.
I had some savings from the scholarship, because I was living very, very modestly. I had been saving for my planned business. In the end, I stayed in Ukraine for half a year. And when I reached out to the school and explained my absence, everyone supported me and I soon received additional financial support to help pay for my mom's surgery. We had to act immediately, because she was already in stage three, so we tried our best to get help as quickly as possible. It was a very, very extensive process and it was successful. After half a year, my mother was cancer-free. And I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to UMPRUM for supporting me so generously.
That’s why cancer is still an important topic to me. I am going to visit my parents in Ukraine right after the state exams. I want to see my mom as soon as possible. It’s very important to spend time together, because we never know if the cancer comes back or not.
KK: You really have a lot of responsibility.
LP: Yes, but I’m happy, because my parents finally sold the house they lived in during the invasion and moved to the west of Ukraine. They’re safe now and that’s very good.
KK: We keep digressing from the original questions – so how do you prepare for a master’s state exam considering all this? Do you want to reflect the recent events?
LP: Well, I think that the head of our studio isn’t very enthusiastic about the heavy topics I keep bringing. The whole studio favors a lighter postmodern style. I can’t imagine that I would completely overcome the subjects of war, loss and suffering, but I would like to articulate them in a lighter and more hopeful way. I just can’t ridicule or exaggerate it, because I come from a society that doesn’t talk about things this way. But I’ll definitely try to find some hope.
Everyone is tired of reflecting on war. In my last project, I tried to show how much I missed my family because I hadn’t seen them for a year at the time. And I reflected this personal feeling of not being with my parents. It resulted in vases that I squeezed and hugged as I would hug the members of my family. As if I were reaching deep into their bodies with this hug.
And the third project is an animation with a mask that breaks out of the tension in a fish tank full of memories. It’s about missing people and childhood when I’m so far away from everything. About not being able to connect like I used to, and how I need to stop missing the physical connection, because it’s probably going to stay that way forever.
I don't even know if it ever ends. But there’s also a silver lining – people are very resilient. They could suddenly become very strong and resilient. Personally, I’m not a very strong person, neither mentally nor physically, but I can see that I’m going to survive this somehow. And somehow you can manage to continue doing good things. That gives me hope. Knowing that we’re not dead and we can even help others.
It’s important not to evaporate in this society. You can’t just survive; you must maintain your authenticity. That’s a big question – how do you maintain it? I’m trying to find the answer to it.
