Yuri

Yuri means "friends' village."

Through years of international relocations — moving between cities, places, and cultures — Varvara has come to cherish the human connections that form within a community and extend across borders.

This canvas carries many layers of stories — a weaving of past, present, and places in between.

At its foundation is jacquard textile "waste" from a collection by Japanese textile designer Yuri Himuro, a friend and colleague from Varvara's time at Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland). Their shared research on storytelling and sustainable textile innovation continues to shape their artistic practices today. In 2018, Yuri gifted these jacquard remnants to Varvara, and they traveled from Tokyo to Vancouver.

Varvara stitched the layers using sashiko embroidery during family camping trips along the beaches of Vancouver Island, imbuing them with quiet hours of care, love, and connection to land and family.

Before the pandemic, a layer of white paint was added, placing the piece into hibernation — mirroring both societal shifts and the teenage years of Varvara's eldest child, who kept it in their room at their newly found family home on Vancouver Island.

In 2024, as Varvara's family life shifted once again, the artwork evolved. New layers emerged: vintage yarns from La Manufacture (a historic weaving museum in Lille, France, found during her art residency) and innovative knitted fibers by Liudmila Norsoyan — a pioneer in textile engineering and a collaborator in Varvara's Japan–Russia projects, whose legacy lives on in the materials she created. These fibers, carried across continents and years of relocation, were woven into the piece, continuing its transformation.

Now, as Varvara's eldest child embarks on their own independent journey, "Yuri" is also ready to find its next home. This artwork embodies themes of female domestic love, community connections near and far, and the honoring of materials that would otherwise be discarded — treasuring every thread and fabric scrap, as well as the human labor, time, and stories woven into each material.

It awaits a collector who shares these values — ready to carry its story forward with care and love.