Testimony (1), 2025

Kseniia Ivanova  

Between shadow and birth
This work captures a state of transition — the space between not yet and already.
Between shadow, where form is just beginning to take shape, and birth, where light finds its voice.
The figure appears not as a body, but as a movement of consciousness. It consists of layers of color, spirals, and lines — traces of experience, memory, and inner journey. Its form is not closed: it flows, bends, and opens toward the center.
The light on the right side of the composition is not an external source.
It is a response. The moment when the inner movement reaches the point of awareness and begins to glow from within.
The dark background does not oppose the light, but creates space for it.
The shadow here is not an absence, but a condition. It is from it that birth is possible.
The lines that envelop the figure act as both a field of protection and direction. They resemble the state of the womb, prayers in motion, breathing that leads the form to its center.
Between Shadow and Birth is a work about the inner moment of truth.
About how light appears not when it is sought, but when one matures to it.