Blackbird

by Dina Belenko

“My work revolves around the emotional resonance of objects, the way they absorb time, memory, and human presence. Still life, often perceived as static, becomes a medium for storytelling, where the arrangement of ordinary things reveals the invisible traces of human presence. I am drawn to the aesthetics of the mundane, to the poetry hidden in chipped coffee cups, crumpled paper, and the familiar clutter of daily life. I am particularly interested in the way familiar objects transform under the weight of displacement. After relocating from my hometown to Los Angeles, I began working with the personal artifacts I carried with me as a means of understanding loss and adaptation. Still life, to me, is not just about arrangement — it is about storytelling. Each object carries its own weight of existence, shaped by the hands that held it, the places it has been, and the silence it inhabits.”