Scrolls
What is a painter to do, confined within four walls during the infamous lockdown?
Draw, of course, you might say!
When oil paints are set aside—their smell not exactly welcome in a shared apartment—colored pencils take over, reviving childhood memories.
Seemingly simple and light, these “childlike” forms become charged with deep and thoughtful meaning, transforming into rich, personal narratives.
Soon, the sketchbook is completely filled, yet the images continue to surface, relentlessly, beneath the tip of the pencil.
Then, the eyes fall upon a roll of paper, still sealed, lying in a corner of the room—delivered fresh that very morning.
Suddenly, the atmosphere shifts: once unrolled, the paper reveals an immense blank page,
ready to receive all the stories,
a never-ending page,
infinite in its potential.
Never-Ending Story
“My painting is, above all, intuitive, and I find it difficult to put into words what I do.
I invent my characters, and with them, I travel through time. I imagine them appearing in various situations and across different historical periods—sometimes far removed from our modern era.”
"Dream", 2021
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, colored pencils, ink on paper
"Duplication", 2023
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, colored pencils, ink on paper
"Italian Dream", 2023
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, colored pencils, ink on paper
"Axis of the World", 2022
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, colored pencils, ink on paper
"Hourglass", 2023
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, fully filled
Colored pencils, ink on paper
Awarded the 2023 Miroir de l’Art Magazine Prize
Presented at the 109 Biennale, Paris
"Maker of Dreams", 2024
Scroll, 1.5 x 10 m, colored pencils, ink on paper
"I have chosen the ideal medium for my work — rolled paper. The scroll itself is a symbolic representation of infinity. I invite the viewer, starting from the first visible section, to keep unrolling.
As in life, they will encounter surprises: there are colorful passages and darker ones — and so each person continues to unroll. But I never finish my scrolls; I leave a blank section at the end, one that each person can fill with their own dreams.
It is a never-ending story..."
— Svetlana Arefiev
Scrolls in Fragments
Fragments of the Whole
Everything is one, and yet everything breaks apart. Each fragment carries within it the echo of the whole — a sliver of essence, a vibration of the greater unity. It is precisely in this fragmentation that the artistic installation finds its power: no longer contained within the limits of a frame or a wall, it expands into space — becoming an act, a statement. It transforms the place, questions it, inhabits it. It does not merely represent — it intervenes.
In art as in life, we are made of these shards: memories, emotions, broken forms that come together to sketch a greater truth. The installation gathers these fragments and anchors them in a real, tangible space — as if to make visible the invisible that connects us all. It invites us to move through the pieces, to feel the tensions, to experience discontinuity as a new form of unity.
Each element placed in space is a choice, a rhythm, a voice. Each fragment tells a story — a moment torn from eternity, a reflection of the world as seen through the prism of time and matter. The installation thus becomes a language — nonlinear, unfixed — one that engages the body as much as the gaze.
Perhaps to understand the whole is to learn how to read its fractures. And perhaps the installation is that place of learning: a space not only to observe, but to feel, to pass through, to inhabit.