About the project
Shell Limestone by Mariia Cherkashyna
In the work in progress, the artist explores the feeling of belonging to the city, Odesa, to which she moved from Mykolaiv, where she was born. Her home was built from shell limestone — a material made of the remains of marine organisms that shape the living environment of the city. It is silent but omnipresent — in façades, foundations, and dust. We look at the surface without noticing the base. Likewise, the cultural layer of the city fades away without an archive, leaving only traces of those whose names are absent from official narratives.
The artist interacts with the limestone as with “an immovable South” — it is their shared dance. The aim is not to create a new myth, but to show the condition of its emergence: the absence of one’s own body in one’s space. When a person does not know where they stand or what surrounds them, they lose not only knowledge but also the right to act. Freedom begins where there is something “one’s own’”— recognized, named, preserved.
“When I have nowhere to stand, I will put a stone. I put culture to understand where I am. I (don’t) want to go back, because the narratives that surround me do not correspond to knowledge. Dance here is not a way to preserve, but a way to witness how something disappears,” says Maria Cherkashyna
About the author
Mariia Cherkashyna is an artist and dancer whose practice grows out of curiosity about Deborah Hay’s principles of dance, while working with the body and theatre. She is interested in where questions, problems, and complexity arise.
For nine years, she studied at a theatre school, and later under Larysa Venediktova at the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Circus and Performing Arts, which she defines as an experimental experience. It was there that dance, Deborah Hay’s principles, and working with the body’s imagination became the basis for Mariia’s further personal practice. She is a member and designer of the independent laboratory and acting group TTT, where theatre is viewed as an open process of research.
In her practice, Mariia Cherkashyna explores the body in urban spaces and environments where memory, movement, attention, and curiosity intersect.
Presentations
- The presentation of the work in progress took place on 6 December 2025, at the Odessa National Fine Art Museum
Video teaser
Additional resources
- Suspilne Odesa mentioned the presentation in the news selection
- Post-release about the presentation of work in progress featured on the Mariupol State University’s website
Implementation team
Production proto produkciia
Executive producer Olga Diatel
Line producers Yulia Parysh, Iryna Onishchuk
Assistant producers Viktoriia Zhembrovska
Communication and media coordination Oleksii Havryliuk (proto produkciia), Maria Lityanska (Odesa National Fine Art Museum)
Copywriter Maria Agisyan
Photo Ivan Strakhov
Poster design Yaroslava Kovalchuk
Video documentation Denys Bohdan, Daria Sokolova
Supported by
Shell Limestone work in progress was created with the support of the Antonin Artaud Fellowship within the second South edition 2025, which focused on independent artists from the South of Ukraine. That edition of the Fellowship was implemented by proto produkciia foundation in partnership with the Odessa National Fine Art Museum and the MY ART Platform with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.