Ukrainian-Canadian artist Ayla Dmyterko’s practice investigates these questions, syncretizing metaphor and figurative imagery to (re)identify objects cross-pollinated between her home province of Saskatchewan and her ancestral lands in Ukraine. Currently based in Glasgow, Scotland, Dmyterko highlights each item’s plurality, disintegrating material hierarchies through the appropriation of found objects and materials — such as wooden shelves and molten beeswax — as frames for her paintings.

Evoking ritual and cultural memory, Dmyterko’s paintings — particularly her “Bread Baskets” series — foster dialogues surrounding the intersections of class, domestic labour, and migration. Addressing the accessibility of archives and visual references, this conversation parses her symbolic visual vocabulary, exposing the psychogeographies that reflect the transnational rhythms and layered temporalities at the heart of her practice.

Spanning time zones between Glasgow and Montréal, this interview — conducted over email and FaceTime — was collaboratively edited into its present form, unfolding as a dialogue informed by both distance and memory.