Sumy stories - a series of sketches that were realized in the early 2000s. Sumy is a small city located in the northeast of Ukraine. This is the city where I was born and spent most of my teenage life. After the collapse of the USSR, my youth fell into a period of general uncertainty and confusion, the transition from totalitarianism and communism to capitalism and democracy. These were difficult times, juvenile delinquency, mafias, confusion of the older generation, misunderstanding of modernity and Western influences, which began to fill all the voids left by the old system. But at the same time, these are interesting times, hopes for a better future (after almost 100 years of totalitarianism), lack of control, times of challenges and experiments. Times when the old system was dying and the new one had not yet replaced it. The sketches represent the fixation of that time, real stories from the artist's teenage life. Fights, a diverse type of income as a cook or construction handyman, the brightest and most painful moments of a teenager of those times (me).
