The Kyiv of Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi’s childhood had already long ceased to exist when tanks rolled into her former neighbourhood last February. In an effort to protect her memories of the Ukrainian capital – which she and her family left for Israel just weeks before the fall of the Soviet Union – the artist, who is now based in Tel Aviv, had started a series called “Soviet Childhood”, rendering in vivid detail (and an engagingly schematic style) certain “sentimental, nostalgic” moments from her formative years in the USSR. Now, one year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Cherkassky-Nnadi has added significantly to that body of work, reimagining the Ukraine that she once knew in its brutal contemporary context. The work is emotional, unsparing and, for Cherkassky-Nnadi, a meaningful way to take stock. 

During the final days of a group show in Tel Aviv featuring all female, Ukrainian-born artists, Cherkassky-Nnadi spoke to Vogue about capturing Kyiv, then and now.

Fifteen, yeah.

I came to Israel just two weeks before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I was sure Kyiv was the capital of the world. This is how I saw it, because it was the capital of Ukraine, and it was a very beautiful city with a lot of things going on. I thought, This is the centre of the world. And it was the Perestroika time. Everything was permitted and everybody was in euphoria because it was something new. Suddenly you can do things that you couldn’t do before. Actually, it was a great time for me as a youth, because everything was open and you could listen to music from the west. But I guess my parents, they were a little bit afraid about where it was going. I think that was the reason they decided to immigrate.

When I came [to Israel], I was in high school and it was my dream to go to Kyiv again. And then I went there in 1996, and it was sort of an awful time to be there because it was very wild. The government was not in control and there were a lot of criminals and it was scary to walk on the street in the night – or even not in the night; it depended on the neighbourhood. And when I look back at it, I think I just had some issues with being an immigrant. After that experience, I didn’t [return] to Kyiv for 18 years, but then I went there again because of an art project that I was working on in 2013.

Well, it was such a powerful experience, because I hadn’t been there for such a long time. It was amazing to see how the memory works, because as I was working I went to the neighbourhood I used to live in. If I had to show on the city plan how to get from place to place, I wouldn’t succeed. But my body somehow remembered everything. My legs took me to the right place. It was a very weird feeling.

Yes. And then I also met my family and my friends – I used to study in an art school there. It was the main art school for Ukraine, and actually many contemporary Ukrainian artists, they also went to this school. It was amazing to meet them [again] because I knew everybody, but I remembered them as children and they’re now grown-up people. And I think I just sort of fell in love again, and I started going all the time, like every year.

Yes. My daughter was born in 2015, and I started going with my daughter all the time, especially because my cousins have children of her age. So I wanted them to have common memories from childhood. So I was really making an effort to be there every year.

I was working on an exhibition that was telling the story of post-Soviet immigration to Israel, and I noticed that every time I tried to draw Kyiv, it came out [looking like] Berlin, because they’re somehow similar. But they’re also very different, and this is the reason why I travelled. I thought, I have to refresh my memory. I have to remember things. But I didn’t know it would be such a powerful experience. Especially because I used to go to Russia quite a lot – Moscow, Saint Petersburg – because most of my friends were from Russia. In Soviet time, Moscow and Kyiv had the same vibe, Moscow was just much bigger. But when I went to Kyiv in 2013, I noticed that it was very different. In the 18 years that I hadn’t been there, it became much more – it now had the same vibe as Prague, and the East European countries. Not like Russia.