Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak is a Houston- based visual artist whose multi-faceted work combines text and image and is influenced by her Ukrainian heritage. Her artworks are visual meditations and multi-layered documentations of past and current events, filtered through her cultural/ social/ political frames of reference.
Three trips marked pivotal turning points in the artist’s work and world view. In 1991, an IREX travel grant enabled her to travel to Ukraine, her ancestral homeland, for the first time. The trip opened her eyes and soul to a long-suffering yet hopeful people, to a land beautiful but ravaged by the genocidal soviet regime. She resolved to commit her creative efforts to “bear witness” to crucial moments in history, to speak truth to power. Five years later, a visit to the Chornobyl Zone left her with a lasting impression of nature’s grace and resilience. Left untamed, nature was resolutely reclaiming herself, regenerating life and spreading her healing mantle over the dust and decay. Nature-oriented visual metaphors - vines, trees, roots, nests, plants - have become constant recurring motifs in her work.
More recently, Bodnar-Balahutrak was awarded a 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship to study contemporary issues-oriented artmaking in Ukraine. Due to the war waged by Russia, the project was re-assigned from Ukraine to Poland, where she met with young Ukrainian artists born and raised in a post-soviet independent Ukraine. They capaciously addressed their current plight of displacement and tragic loss. Their resilience and hope have resonated with Bodnar-Balahutrak and encouraged her own artmaking. She continues to explore narrative and cultural metaphor by combining collage, text, and figuration.
Winter 2025 Solo Exhibition: http://www.hooksepsteingalleries.com/turning-toward-the-light
