On February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ganna Ki was at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. While speaking with her mother, who informed her of the invasion, the artist stood before the figure of the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, who, according to legend, both creates and destroys life. Upon her return to Berlin, canvases found on the street, black and white paint became the starting point for “Ocean of Unknown.” The series marked a transition towards destruction as an artistic method through which the works emerged. The paintings evolved through movement and expanded consciousness. Animals, landscapes, memories, and dream images gradually appeared. “Ocean of Unknown” became an access point to the individual and collective unconscious.
In 2025, a fire rendered the building where Ganna Ki lived uninhabitable. The artist was forced to leave her apartment for about a year, which became the starting point for an artistic research journey of over three months through Latin America. In Bogotá, Colombia, Ganna Ki engaged with the practices of muralists who address intergenerational memory, social justice, and the reconstruction of local communities. In the cloud forests of Mindo, Ecuador, the research continued at the Hayulima Spiritual Sanctuary through encounters with plant medicine and local forms of traditional healing arts. In the Peruvian Amazon, the artist worked with clay, natural pigments, and weaving techniques, exchanging knowledge with bearers of the Kichwa and Shipibo-Konibo traditions. A central part of this was a residency at the Sachaqa Centro de Arte in San Roque de Cumbaza, Peru, culminating in the solo exhibition “Totem Tales,” a public lecture, and a community workshop.
“Totem Tales” became a fusion of living cosmologies of the Andes and the Amazon, plant psychedelic medicine, and direct work with the earth. Its foundation is the Chakana: it connects the underworld of the serpent, the middle world of the puma, and the upper world of the condor. Between them, the spider appears as a figure weaving the threads of time.
The large canvases and seven small drawings were created in San Roque de Cumbaza. Ganna Ki produced the pigments for the drawings from Ayahuasca. The journey concluded once again in Mexico City. Upon her return to the National Museum of Anthropology, Ganna Ki encountered the monumental figure of Coatlicue – the woman with the serpent skirt – for the first time. In 2022, the artist had met the serpent father but had not yet seen the mother.
In 2026, Ganna Ki returned to Mexico to intensively engage with Coatlicue. Field research in Oaxaca and Santa María Atzompa included investigations at the Centro Cultural San Pablo and the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, as well as participation in local discussions on Indigenous healing traditions, ecology, and women’s collectives. In collaboration with the Ruiz family of ceramic artists in Santa María Atzompa, Ganna Ki created green ceramic sculptures dedicated to Coatlicue. She continued her research through unglazed terracotta, drawing, painting, and performance. Bodies became vessels and serpents. Openings, cavities, and interiors became transitions between different forms of being.
In Oaxaca, Ganna Ki created seven drawings with menstrual blood. They enter into a dialogue with seven drawings made with Ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon, even before the artist encountered Coatlicue. These materials originate from two living bodies: the body of the earth – Ayahuasca – and the female body – menstrual blood. On paper, they assume the same color.
“Totem Tales” and “Dark Mother: Coatlicue Research” become two phases of a single investigation, in which the dark mother manifests as a living cosmos.
Ganna Ki (b. 1986) is a multidisciplinary artist from Eastern Ukraine who explores the unconscious as a carrier of collective memory. Her practice extends from painting and sculpture to ritualized and performative expressions, in which she draws on ancient mythologies to translate her artistic insights into coherent, relatable archetypes. Her work illuminates critical intersections between ecological frameworks, shadow research, and ritual anthropology, connecting her media and cultural research with embodied artistic practice. She studied linguistics at Zaporizhzhia National University in Ukraine and media and cultural studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
Ganna Ki lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
More about the artist can be found here.
