A Quest to Hold on to Home
I Was Born And Raised
I was born and raised in Luhansk, second biggest city of Donbas region, Ukraine. The city and its administrative territory had a longer border with Russia than it did with Ukraine. Some called Luhansk “the far East of Ukraine”. It ultimately meant two things: that it was in the East, and therefore practically in Russia, and that it was far. The distance between Luhansk and Lviv, where I later moved to study is around 1330 km, which is approximately the distance between New York City and Orlando, Florida. In the economy of Ukrainian geography, it is the distance from the Russian border to the Polish one. The trains that connected Luhansk to Lviv existed, but were cancelled around May of 2011, three years prior to the invasion. I think, this is when we felt something was off.
Luhansk was a rather small, by today’s standards, industrial city, with around 450.000 inhabitants, most of them occupied in the variety of heavy industry production. The exported product the city was most proud of were trains. Precisely, that part of the train that drags along all the rest of the units, the heavy grim machine that operated on coal (Donbas’ main natural resource, and the source of most humanitarian crises). For some reason, all the trains assembled in Luhansk were painted in vibrant green. They were exported in many nations around the world. Someone once told a story about a group of Indian clients, who refused to climb the stairs of the unit, because that shade of green was sacred for them, so the train was sent back, and repainted.
The toponymy of the city was tied to the plants and factories, as well as to some Soviet landmarks and names. In fact, the city was full of monuments reveling in the Soviet memory, built by Ukrainian artists, of different levels of artistic mastery. We even had our own “Red Square”: a rather beautiful park that developed on the terraces topped by the massive building of the university featuring the so-called “Stalin’s imperial style”: grand columns, big rounded windows, sets of stairs, and overall resemblance to a Roman temple, with an unchanging star on the top, sort of a symbol of ownership that the Soviet Union left behind. This park and its Soviet temple marked the beginning of the part of the city I always loved, because it was old, it held some history in it, it was very green and romantic, as close as a part of an industrial provincial town can get to romance. The trees there were tall and very old, there was a lot of shade and not so much dust.
“ I think this legend was born from the colonial conviction that Ukrainians were not capable of erecting a piece of architecture of such beauty and quality. It had to be someone else, someone better, more skilled, possibly foreign. So, German men, it was.”
That part of the city had its own architectural landmark — the four-star hotel “Ukraine”. The urban legend had it that it was designed and built by the German hostages that remained in the city after the Second World War. In fact, this is what my mother used to tell me, and it sounded utterly captivating. I imagined these dirty men in striped pyjamas building this beautiful complex in red brick. I think this legend was born from the colonial conviction that Ukrainians were not capable of erecting a piece of architecture of such beauty and quality. It had to be someone else, someone better, more skilled, possibly foreign. So, German men, it was. It was not completely false. The hotel’s construction began in 1944, and the German soldiers captured by the Soviet army did participate in the initial stages, but mostly doing the dirtiest, heaviest work. In reality, the author of the project was a famed Ukrainian architect Yosyp Karakis, who was born in 1918 near Odesa and had quite a list of completed projects by the time of his death, in 1988. He integrated his visual language into this project, creating a truly beautiful revisitation of the Ukrainian baroque. The reason we did not hear about him, and gave all the credit to the imaginary German men is that, after building the hotel, the architect Karakis was accused of “bourgeois nationalism” and “cosmopolitanism”, which were heavy labels to bear in the Soviet Union.
Four-star hotel “Ukraine” in Luhansk, Ukraine.
I did not know anything about it, except that it was built by Germans, and that I loved it dearly, spending countless hours around its porticoes and ground-floor balconies. The walls were covered in motifs of a folk carpet, created with red brick of diverse shades. The facade featured elaborate semi-columns, and a set of elegant balconies, and was topped with a baroque fronton that hosted a clock. The border of the roof was a fragile sequence of little arches and spikes. Although the building occupied a lot of space and was quite massive, its architecture made it seem lightweight, porous and fairytail-ish. This hotel felt like a breeze of fresh air in the grey, anonymous industrial landscape.
I grew up in an apartment complex that stood on the outskirts of the city. It was a quite big neighbourhood, much newer than most parts of the city. It was surrounded by planes covered in a variety of herbs, sometimes crossed by tiny rivers. The windows of my home looked straight at the chalk ravine with an artificial forest on top of it. It changed colours according to the season, becoming bright red around October. In May and June, the silver sea of feather grass would cover the hills of the ravine, shining in the light of the late afternoon sun. The sunsets were incredible there.
A large, brand-new road was separating the urban part of the neighbourhood from the rural planes. It was not a very popular highway, with no traffic at all, so we quickly started using it for our regular hangouts with groups of friends. Following the highway, after a quite long walk, it was possible to reach the house of one of them. The girl lived in one of the private suburban houses. She had a little garden that we used for our multiple get-togethers. We drank tea made of herbs gathered in the plains beyond the highway.
The memories of the first seventeen years of my life are connected to that neighbourhood, to that city. I remember chasing lizards in summer and playing in the snow in the rigid winter temperatures (sometimes when the temperature would fall -38C, schools would close). I remember the abundance of apricot trees that blossomed in April and covered everything in delicate white petals. I remember the view from the window of the classrooms of my school, seasons changing, years running.
“The first weeks of 2014 were the last time I visited Luhansk, it was the last time I entered my room, and the last time I walked the streets I grew up in. As I was leaving, there was no reason to think I would never come back. In March 2014 Russia occupied Crimea. In the same period, the occupation of Donbas began, and it began with my hometown.”
What I also remember is feeling desperately out of place in that town, the feeling that urged me to run away as soon as I could. When I was sixteen, I went to the USA for an exchange year. When I came back, I had one more year of high school to go, but the city felt even smaller now. Every chance I got, I would get on the train with the pocket money my mom would give me, and go visit cities around Ukraine. I quickly got acquainted with many young people, artists, writers, musicians. My life was exciting and I could not wait to keep living it. I was accepted to the National Art Academy of Lviv in 2013, and left my hometown. In November of that year, the Revolution in Kyiv started. I was eighteen, shart-minded, and I was from Luhansk, which meant I had an idea about Russian imperialism and its influence on Ukraine, because my region was targeted the most by Russian media, propaganda and political strategies. Even though I had no academic experience to articulate this influence in correct terms, I knew what was happening. Everyone did.
The first weeks of 2014 were the last time I visited Luhansk, it was the last time I entered my room, and the last time I walked the streets I grew up in. As I was leaving, there was no reason to think I would never come back. In March 2014 Russia occupied Crimea. In the same period, the occupation of Donbas began, and it began with my hometown. As a member of the resistance, my mother had to flee the city, when our last name appeared on the wanted list, and join me in Lviv, where she stayed. We have never been back home. We have lived in a country consumed by war since then, therefore, as I am writing this, it feels like normality. Back in the day, though, war was something that belonged to the past, something very far away, barbaric, and absolutely unbelievable.
Even though as a teenager I always dreamt of leaving the small industrial city I was born in, as an adult I realise that I was robbed of my home, both physically and metaphorically. The memories of my childhood and adolescence are poisoned, and vandalised by the war and occupation of my hometown. We had to sell our house at the lowest price possible. My room, where I wrote poetry on the wallpaper, listened to music and worked on my paintings is now occupied by someone else, someone who came from the country that attacked Ukraine in 2014, and nobody noticed.
Hanging Roots
The branch of human geography that studies the concept of home, sees it as much more than a physical structure. It is connected to identity and a sense of belonging. The loss of home, in this perspective, causes trauma, loss of agency, sense of rootlessness. Independently from what is called home, the impossibility of remaining in close connection with it is a dramatic experience. There is no need to turn to science in order to explain why losing a home is so traumatising. But it does seem that those who experienced this will seek particular kinds of comfort later in life. They will look for stability, for a community to belong to, and they will hold on to people in their life with more passion than others. They will find it is hard to let go of something or someone.
Perhaps, the saddest part of it all is losing one’s personal piece of history. Migration, relocation or displacement urges families to leave many things behind. Forgotten photographs, heirloom teacups, books, diaries, old letters, and that sweater someone bought many years ago that is nowhere to be found now. Intangible things get lost too. A particular dialect from home will not be used anymore, family histories will be forgotten, the connections with school friends will be lost.
Kateryna Aliinyk, 004. Photo courtesy of the artist.
An intricate system of elements, both material and intangible, underpins our identity and helps us make sense of past events. These are similar to the roots of a tree: when part of the root system dies, a portion of the tree dies with it, forcing the whole structure to adapt and reshape itself. This thought came to mind when I encountered a painting by Kateryna Aliinyk that deeply resonated with me. To my surprise, I discovered that she, too, was born in Luhansk. Just a few years younger than me, Kateryna experienced the beginning of the war on the cusp of adulthood, just before finishing high school. Our experiences differ greatly — Kateryna has memories of hiding from the first shellings in her family’s basement. Yet, the feelings of loss, disconnection from reality, and rootlessness are something we share.
I hadn’t planned to write this text until I saw those hanging roots. A tree suspended in mid-air, its sprawling roots reaching for the soil, searching for a place to anchor. The tree’s quest for stability mirrors our own search for a ground to settle upon. Kateryna’s canvas is both figurative and abstract, offering solace to those grappling with grief while achieving a masterful balance of colour and composition. Despite its complexity, the painting does not incite anxiety — at least, not for me. Instead, it conveys a quiet acceptance: life will never be the same, but we now understand what it will be like moving forward. It’s like resting on a soft forest bed — aware of the wild animals prowling nearby yet finding peace in that awareness and embracing it fully.
Kateryna Aliinyk, Ukrainian Garden 2022. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ukrainian Garden is the title of another canvas by Aliinyk. The recurring focus on soil as the central subject is far from incidental. The earth is a constant, unmoving presence — enduring everything in silence. It holds the memory of events, preserving artefacts of war, precious resources, and the remains of those who gave their lives cultivating and defending this land.
In the painting, one can discern the roots of garden vegetables, fragments of grass and wood, alongside jagged, heated shards of shells that now pollute the soil. Ukrainian land, much like this scene, is littered with such foreign and destructive remnants. In stark contrast to the soil — the source of life and abundance — these shards, once part of missiles launched to destroy, symbolise death and devastation, poisoning the fertile, welcoming ground. Buried deep beneath the surface, they remain, perhaps waiting for a distant future when someone unearths them and views the war as a chapter from a long-past era.
Mapping an Imaginary Home
The search for a home is a universal quest. While the circumstances, geographies, languages, and histories may differ, the yearning to find one’s own place remains a constant. In this case, the story is about someone whose home resides in their imagination, spilling vividly across their canvases. Flavio Delice, a Haitian artist who has never set foot in Haiti, embodies this journey. Born to a family of migrants forced to abandon their homeland due to dire humanitarian conditions, Delice has spent his life on the move. For him, home is where one’s footprint lies — a unique imprint of identity that transforms everything it touches. The visual markers he inherited from his roots emerge unmistakably in his work.
Flavio Delice, Fos Zetwal #1. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Flavio Delice spent years imagining what Haiti — his home — might be like, piecing it together through family stories and conversations with friends. This longing finds expression in his art, marked by a distinctive visual presence that renders his work instantly recognisable. Regardless of the medium, his creations reflect a profound connection to a place he has only known in his dreams. In a series of canvases, Delice draws maps infused with the essence of home, repeatedly attempting to trace his way there and commit it to memory. His work is both a tribute to his heritage and a personal odyssey, exploring what it means to belong to a place he has never physically seen but that restlessly calls him.
The reason Flavio Delice caught my attention is rather simple. After having lost the possibility of going back home, I found myself wandering around the streets of the city I once knew so well, in my dreams. I always thought that missing home meant missing one’s personal corner, an apartment, a house, or a complex of things that constituted the routine. Turned out, I was wrong. In my dreams, I could never enter the apartment I grew up in, but kept roaming the neighbourhood. When awake, I can trace my usual itineraries in my imagination, forcing myself to remember everything in minimal detail. However, as years passed, the memories gradually faded, until I was not confident about even having them. What I am left with now is an idea of home I once had, and eventual faded dreams (or nightmares) about it.
“I talk about Haiti because this is what makes me dream and keeps me going,” says the artist in a private conversation. Flavio Delice’s work, however, transcends the imagined vision of the island. It speaks to all who, like him, wander the world, carrying their roots with them, often untethered yet longing for connection.
Flavio Delice, Mas Zetwal #4. Photo courtesy of the artist.
His canvases resemble sketches of dreams — fleeting impressions captured by someone who just woke up, struggling to piece together the images their mind has summoned. Gradually, the fragments merge, forming a whole that is ready to welcome the viewer. Through his art, Delice does more than explore his own home, loss, and search for roots; he extends an invitation. To those grappling with their own sense of displacement, his work offers a place to rest, a method to adopt, and a shared dream to embrace.
Beyond their aesthetic appeal, Delice’s creations are acts of profound generosity — gestures of humanity extended to those in need of comfort and connection. They are not merely paintings but open doors, inviting others to find solace and companionship in the universal quest for belonging.
