© Olesia Serohina · 2025
Working with paper cutting, collage and participatory arts.
Through exhibitions, workshops and community projects, she explores themes of home, memory, identity and belonging.
Large-scale hand-cut paper works. Hung in windows, they transform light into pattern. Each piece is unique.
View worksAnalogue collage and works fusing paper cutting with collage — exploring war, displacement and cultural memory.
View worksParticipatory sessions in vytynanka, motanka and collage across Kent and London. Open to all. Materials included.
Book a session
Serohina's practice spans traditional Ukrainian paper cutting, analogue collage and sacral motanka dolls — three disciplines forming a single investigation into memory, displacement and what endures.
Read full biographyThree workshops. All materials provided. Available across Kent and London.
Participants create their own Tree of Life using scissors or craft knife. Meditative, precise, and open to all. Quietly therapeutic — cutting requires concentration that quietens other thoughts.
Made without needles, from torn cloth, imbued with intention. Participants are invited to bring fabric that holds personal meaning — these materials can be incorporated into the doll.
Tear, cut and reassemble. The subconscious leads. By the end of two hours, everyone has made something they did not know they could make. No right way, no wrong way.
Olesia Serohina is a Ukrainian artist based in Faversham, Kent. Working primarily with traditional Ukrainian paper cutting (vytynanka), analogue collage and motanka doll making, she explores memory, belonging and the fragile relationship between people and place.
Born in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Serohina graduated in Fine Art, Aesthetics and Ethics from Kryvyi Rih National Pedagogical University in 2003. Since relocating to the UK in 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, her practice has increasingly focused on questions of home, cultural memory and resilience.
Drawing on traditional Ukrainian visual language while embracing contemporary artistic practice, her work transforms paper into a medium of remembrance, connection and quiet resistance.
Paper is my primary material. It is simple, accessible, and extraordinarily honest. It remembers every touch. Every cut is irreversible. Nothing can be hidden or corrected.
I work with paper because it carries both fragility and strength. A single sheet can hold memory, loss, celebration and hope at the same time.
My practice grows from the Ukrainian tradition of vytynanka, but I don't see it as folklore preserved behind glass. I see it as a living language that continues to evolve. By combining paper cutting with analogue collage and motanka making, I create contemporary works rooted in cultural memory while speaking about universal human experiences.
Since leaving Ukraine in 2022, questions of home, identity and belonging have become inseparable from my work. Rather than documenting war directly, I am interested in what survives it: memory, ritual, beauty and the quiet resilience carried through generations.
My material is paper. My subject is what endures.
Since arriving in Kent in 2022, Serohina has worked to share Ukrainian cultural heritage with communities across the South East — not as a museum exhibit, but as a living practice.
On 14 March 2026, St Mary of Charity Church — one of England's oldest — became the setting for an intimate charity concert by Ukrainian musician Dmytro Shurov (PIANOBOY). The event raised £4,200 (over 250,000 UAH) for two organisations supporting Ukrainian soldiers: СВО'і (tactical medicine) and Tytanovi Rehab (rehabilitation, surgery and implants for the wounded).
The evening brought together English and Ukrainian communities in Faversham. Guests learned the Ukrainian word for love — кохання — and sang Chervona Ruta together. Serohina contributed a framed Ukrainian vytynanka artwork as one of the raffle prizes, and was among the co-organisers of the event.
Serohina works in partnership with Creek Creative Studios in Faversham. She is always open to new partnerships in cultural education, refugee support, wellbeing and intergenerational arts.
Every workshop is also a small act of cultural exchange. Serohina has worked with Women's Institute groups, community arts centres, festival audiences, school groups and individual adult learners. Several sessions have been funded through the UK Government's Arts for All programme.
Making a motanka — by hand, without tools, from cloth that may have been carried from home — is an act of continuity. It connects people to something older than the war, older than displacement.
Between 2023 and 2024, Serohina was involved in a series of exhibitions across Faversham, Sittingbourne and Chatham, giving local audiences in Kent their first sustained encounter with contemporary Ukrainian artistic practice.
Solo and group exhibitions from 2002 to the present, across Ukraine, Europe and the United Kingdom.
Whether you are interested in the work, in bringing a workshop to your organisation, in discussing a commission or exhibition — please do write. I aim to reply within a few days.
High-resolution images and a full press pack are available on request. CV and artist statement for Arts Council applications also available.
© Olesia Serohina · HYST Art Studio
HYST Art StudioA place where children learn to see, imagine and create — without rules, without templates, without wrong answers.
Every child creates something entirely their own.
There are no right or wrong drawings here.
Maximum 4–5 children. Every child gets real attention.
Technique follows curiosity, not the other way around.
Sessions are shaped by training in art therapy — creativity as a space to relax, explore and be.
Children learn to look carefully, think visually and trust their own eye.
All materials included. Address shared on booking.
Not at all — and that's the point. These classes are not about learning to draw correctly. They're about rediscovering creativity as something without rules or boundaries. Children who think they can't draw often thrive the most.
Nothing. All materials are included — paper, paints, pencils, collage materials and more. Just bring curiosity.
Maximum 4–5 children. This is intentional — small groups mean every child is seen, supported and has space to create at their own pace.
In my home studio in Faversham — a calm, creative space around an oval table. The exact address is shared after booking.
Write to book a trial class (£12, all materials included). I'll reply within a few days with available times and the studio address.
Email to book