Pregnant Figure II. Roses and Shell Casings. From Pregnant Series "After Death Comes Life"

This figure carries within it the residues of the artist’s earlier work, the remnants of a soap sculpture she created for the National Fine Arts  Museum in Odesa in 2019. Back then, she could only use artificial flowers; real ones wilted too quickly. Those same artificial roses remained with her, silent witnesses of an earlier self, an earlier grief. “At the time,” she recalls, “that sculpture was the saddest work I had ever made. But even that sadness cannot compare to the one I feel now.” In the new, this time pregnant sculpture, Maria decided to return to those flowers – not as decoration, but as vessels of memory. Unlike before, she infused them with what she calls a “gentler energy”, an attempt at reconciliation, at quiet joy, at life continuing despite everything. Roses thus becomes a dialogue between two timelines of the same body: the woman she once was and the woman who continues to survive. The artificial roses, once symbols of imitation, now serve as fragile mediators between authenticity and artifice, loss and rebirth. Here, flowers no longer simply adorn the body; they become the body. They hold within them all the layers of life that persist after death; layers that ache, rot, glow, and continue to transform.