Crocheted Memory

The Crocheted Memory project is an attempt to capture the experience of women's resilience through the material that is always with us: our own hair. The daily gesture of brushing turns into an intimate practice of collecting memory, sharply reacting to recent changes in women's rights and the uncertainty that lies behind them.

The art object will be created from my collected hair, turned into thin threads. I have been collecting my own hair for almost 10 years, but only now, when the fundamental values in the world have been shaken, did I realize what form this hair and the experience captured in it should take. 

 

In this work, I turn inward—to personal, intimate narratives—and at the same time go outward, addressing global issues of gender inequality, sexism, unpaid labour, and victimization. While these themes are rooted in my Ukrainian experience, they resonate with women from all continents—North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East—making this project both deeply personal and universal.

 

I began intuitively collecting my own hair in 2015, at first without clear intention — only a deep inner pull. Now, looking at this collected matter, I see how much it has absorbed: revolution, war, pandemic, migration, full-scale invasion, loss of friends, and adaptation to new environments — but also love, support, and connection to family. Every morning, as I brush my hair, I feel it: I’ve survived, I have endured, I’m still here. And in that—there is strength.

 

Crocheted Memory is a gesture of preservation: tenderness as a form of resistance, memory as a political act, and the transformation of the most fragile material into a source of strength. It functions as both emotional armour and a material archive of endurance, daily care, and presence. A contemporary kind of talisman — reminding women that even in moments of collapse, we carry within us a deep inner reserve: experience, transformation, and wisdom.