Polina Shcherbyna: The Highest Point of an Empty Temple
In her exhibition ‘The Highest Point of an Empty Temple’, Polina Shcherbyna reflects on the disappointments and horrors of the 21st century, referencing the cycle of tragedy and hope that repeats throughout human history. She examines human weaknesses, the conflict between good and evil, and the paradox of human existence — such as how people sacrifice freedom and rights in their fight for freedom and rights.
The central theme of the exhibition is the figure of the victim, explored through sacred images that reflect on historical events such as the siege of Kyiv in 1240, the Second World War, and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
In her artworks, Shcherbyna enters into a dialogue with the philosophical ideas of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, as well as with Andrei Tarkovsky’s film ‘Andrei Rublev’, among others.
From both an aesthetic and conceptual perspective, the exhibition is reminiscent of a temple — but one where sacred images become artifacts of pain in the modern world, viewed through the prism of suffering Christian motifs such as the crucifixion.
The exhibition includes paintings on unprimed linen fabric, featuring the artist’s unique palette of dark pigments, as well as carved and burned paintings that evolve into monumental installations. All works were created during the years 2023–2025.
The artworks explore the conflict between victim and power, as well as the search for new forms of spirituality and sensitivity to the pain of the world in a time marked by war and spiritual poverty. Presented in several episodes, the exhibition unfolds as a long-form narrative of different scenes of sacrifice and hope.
It also raises the question: Is rebirth possible in a place of emptiness?
Polina Shcherbyna (*1993 in Kyiv, UA, lives in Leipzig, DE) is a visual artist-painter. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv, UA (NAFAA), where she studied at the workshop of Monumental Painting and Temple Culture named after Professor Mykola Storozhenko (2012-2018). She actively participated in various projects and exhibitions in Europe, the USA and Ukraine: Nominated as a laureate of the ‘Bourse Habib Sharifi’ scholarship 2025, with the installation ‘Give The Chance On The Earth For Love To Overcome Death’ that was shown as the first part of the big scholarship project at SNBA, Paris, France; in 2024 her works were featured in the solo exhibition ‘From Each Wound in One Day A Flower Will Grow’, Gallery DIM, Warsaw, Poland, in ‘Traces of Timelessness, Künstlerhaus Sootböern, Hamburg, Germany, in ‘A promise of tomorrow’, curated by Nicola Petek in frontviews at HAUNT, Berlin, Germany, as well as in 2023 in the solo exhibition ‘LES ENFANTS VONT BIEN’ at Idealfruhstuck, Paris, France. She also created the site-specific project ‘Cycle of History’ for ‘Et cetera pp’, Begehungen Festival, Palais Lichtenstein, Germany in 2023, participated in the exhibition ‘Women of Liberty’, Salon Mondial, Basel, Switzerland in 2023, in the same year she participated in the A-i-R program of the Internationales Künstlerhaus, in Schwandorf-Fronberg, Germany. In 2022 Polina took a part in the exhibition ‘FIRE and HOPE’, NTK Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic, and in the international artist-in-residence program K. A.I.R-Kosice, Šopa Gallery, Kosice, Slovakia, where she realized the project ‘Tree of Great Height Standing in the Middle of the earth’ for the solo/duo exhibition ‘Living according to Sky’ at the Šopa Gallery.
