Tatsiana Yelistratava: The Shape of Resilience: Becoming Whole
11 August - 30 September 2026
Coral Bridge Gallery is delighted to share the news of a new solo exhibition by our artist Tatsiana Yelistratava, The Shape of Resilience: Becoming Whole, currently presented by Artseeker Gallery on Artsy from 11 August to 30 September 2026.
The exhibition brings together works from Yelistratava's ongoing series The Shape of Resilience, a deeply personal exploration of transformation, identity and the human capacity to rebuild after rupture.
At the centre of the series is the idea that resilience does not necessarily mean returning to the person we were before. Instead, it can mean accepting change and consciously constructing a new sense of wholeness from what remains.
Yelistratava's distinctive process is fundamental to this idea. She begins with expressive figurative paintings created in saturated, contrasting colours. Once the image is complete, she physically tears the painted surface apart and reconstructs it, deliberately preserving the fractures, gaps and irregular edges. In several works, brightly coloured cotton threads are then woven across the fragmented figures.
These threads become a visual language of their own. They can represent memory, emotional attachment, human connection, inner conflict, restraint or support. Sometimes they appear to hold the figure together; at other times, they seem to restrict or entangle it. Their meaning shifts with each work, reflecting the complexity of the healing process.
The resulting paintings exist somewhere between traditional portraiture and constructed object. Their surfaces retain physical evidence of both destruction and reconstruction, making the act of creating inseparable from the story the work tells.
The exhibition asks a central question:
What does it mean to become whole after you have been changed?
Across the series, Yelistratava's fragmented figures move through different states of vulnerability, resistance, surrender and renewal. Some reach towards connection, some attempt to escape invisible restraints, while others simply exist in the quiet space between breaking and becoming.
Rather than presenting resilience as an absence of weakness, the artist approaches it as an ongoing process - one that allows wounds, memories and changes to become part of a new identity.
Born and raised in Belarus and now based in Hurghada, Egypt, Tatsiana Yelistratava is a self-taught contemporary artist with more than a decade of artistic practice. Her earlier professional background in medicine continues to influence her interest in the human body, emotional states and the relationship between physical and psychological experience.
Her current visual language combines contemporary figurative painting, expressive colour, physical fragmentation, collage and textile elements. The contrast between intensely coloured figures and deep black negative space has become an important characteristic of her practice.
The Shape of Resilience: Becoming Whole represents an important stage in the development of Yelistratava's artistic language. The series moves beyond the idea of simply depicting emotion and instead makes transformation physically visible within the artwork itself.
For Coral Bridge Gallery, the exhibition marks another opportunity to introduce Yelistratava's evolving practice to an international audience and to highlight the distinctive language she is developing around resilience, fragmentation and reconstruction.
The exhibition The Shape of Resilience: Becoming Whole can be viewed on Artsy from 11 August to 30 September 2026, presented by Artseeker Gallery.
Artist: Tatsiana Yelistratava
Exhibition: The Shape of Resilience: Becoming Whole
Presented by: Artseeker Gallery
Platform: Artsy
Dates: 11 August - 30 September
