Taiwan, Feb'26; Part 2

Iryna Shestak — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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Taiwan, Feb'26; Part 1

Iryna Shestak — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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A peak into my grandma's vitrine

Iryna Shestak — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a room in my grandparent’s house in a village outside of Bilhorod-Dnistrovsk’yi, Ukraine. I don’t remember it ever being occupied, but I am certain at another time this room would have had guests over for birthdays or New Year’s dinners, with tables put together to make sure 20 people can get plenty of food.

My grandma kept it perfectly tidy and clean at all times (don’t know where she found the time - she always had a million chores she was always doing). It resembled a family museum over the years with everything stored and displayed in various ornate ways in a glass vitrine.

I’d see little liqueur glasses, a rhyton (or two), a collection of porcelain figurines dressed in traditional Ukrainian attire scattered along the displays of glass bowls, wine pitchers, and Orthodox icons. After my parents along with me and my sister immigrated, my grandma moved some of my mum’s objects of similar nature, expanding the collection with objects my sister and I would make in school and various assortment of our own cups and glasses.

Come take a small peak at some of my memories of this vitrine that my grandma spent so many years curating. </div>

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The idea for this zine came together somewhat unexpectedly from several unlikely sources.

After my grandma passed in spring 2022, I started working on paintings of moments captured on camera during my visits to my grandparents in the south of Ukraine.

As I continued to paint, I started noticing just how many photos I took of all the tchotchkes on the various shelves around her house.

Putting all those sketches into a zine didn't occur to me until almost a year later, after I was trying to figure out what to do with a very limited amount of washi paper I brought back with me from Japan. Having only give-or-take 15 A3 pages, I wanted to maximise the number of printed copies.

Folding the paper to individually show small vignettes of the numerous objects in the vitrine seemed like a neat way to individually tell stories of all the collected objects as part of a whole.

This zine is printed on half of an A3 paper split lengthwise and folded like an accordion. About half of the copies use that Japanese washi paper. The other half are printed on Chinese caligraphy paper, brought back from China by Xinyi of The Print House</a>. It's printed in blue,

flat gold</div> and

fluorescent orange</div> on SF5350 EII riso printer. Edition of 50 copies. </div>

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Iryna Shestak: Art Portfolio

Taiwan, Feb'26; Part 2

Taiwan, Feb'26; Part 1

A peak into my grandma's vitrine

Pastels

Riso