Shlyah | Anna Tsivina
Shlyah (2026) is an exploration of the self as a constructed variable, built from small, everyday moments — encounters, conversations, cigarette smoke, landscapes. The title, the Ukrainian word for “way,” suggests that identity is a path continually paved by the choices we make, small coincidences, and our perspectives. This work explores the subjectivity of reality. Memory, environment, and interaction blur together, challenging the boundary between internal identity and external influence. We are made up of everything we have encountered; thus, the work asks: where does the world end and the individual begin?
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The artwork is in response to “Orientation” by Cody Tracy
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Anna Tsivina is a Ukrainian artist and a student at the University of Richmond. Her work explores questions of identity, memory, and nostalgia, shaped by a life spent moving between places and cultures. Drawing from personal experience, she examines how environments, encounters, and time influence the construction of the self.