Maria Kulikovska’s Art of Survival: Destruction, Rebirth, and the Politics of the Body

By KEN KRANTZ March 6, 2025

Maria Kulikovska’s debut U.S. solo exhibition, Once Leda Found an Egg – Blue Like a Hyacinth, is undoubtedly the work of an artist without borders. The show opened with a performance of Lustration / Ablution, during which the artist washed herself with a soap cast of her own body. For an hour, Kulikovska sat in a claw-footed tub, methodically dissolving the sculpture, splattering w fragments on the ground, accompanied by tonal ambient music. Originally realized for the art issue of Vogue Ukraine, this performance encapsulates the artist’s ongoing exploration of destruction, rebirth, and personal history.

Maria Kulikovska (Feb. 2025) by Anna Droddy

Kulikovska exhibits extreme technical skill in traditional mediums, as exemplified in Virgin with Child, an oil painting positioned to the right of Rukh Art Hub’s entryway. However, much of her oeuvre returns to the symbolic preservation and destruction of her own physical form—an understandable fixation for an artist whose most stable home may be her own body. The stakes of self-preservation are heightened by her transition to motherhood and her experience of forced migration, first from Crimea to Ukraine, and later from Ukraine to Europe.

Jøssingfjord Vattenmuseum, Norway; Francisco Carolinum Museum for Contemporary and Modern Art, Linz, Austria; and National Odesa Arts Museum, Ukraine. The artist’s performances and works have been presented in group shows and as individual pieces at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle; The Albertinum, Dresden, Germany; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK; Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine; and many more.

Virgin With Child (2011) via Rukh Art Hub

In the Lustration / Ablution performance, Kulikovska engages in an active destruction of the self. The original iteration did not include her black dress. She explains, “Yesterday was February 24, marking three years of the full-scale war. I have many symbolic thoughts running through my mind right now. Yesterday’s date held special meaning, and I was wearing a black dress, which accompanied my very dark, black drawings that I made during the annexation of Crimea.”

Kulikovska’s personal history is deeply entwined with political displacement. In 2014, she was banned from her homeland in Kerch, Crimea. Simultaneously, Russian forces seized the international art center Izolyatsia in Donetsk, transforming it into a prison and torture chamber. Fragments of Kulikovska’s signature body casts remain strewn in the dark corners of that space.

Drawings on the Paper Recieved from Migration Offices (2018-Ongoing) via Rukh Art Hub

As political uncertainty looms in the U.S., particularly concerning issues of reproductive autonomy and state control over bodies, Kulikovska’s work gains heightened relevance. Her scattered sculptures in Donetsk are as haunting reminders of the fragility of bodily autonomy. 

In the soap bust displayed at Rukh Art Hub in New York, Kulikovska reflects on the inevitability of destruction: “I made this bust in 2018, and it remained stable until 2022, when the full-scale war started. It was kept properly in the gallery in central Kyiv. Somehow, it cracked at the head and began deforming… It’s the only bust that survived from my older works, and I brought it from Kyiv specifically for this performance.”

Kulikovska’s performance serves as a visceral meditation on the body as both a temporary and permanent home. Through the deliberate destruction of her own likeness in Lustration / Ablution, she compels the audience to confront material impermanence. Her experience of forced migration and the ongoing war in Ukraine imbue her work with profound urgency. In a time of global unrest, her art stands as a testament to survival, resistance, and the enduring power of artistic witness.