Cozy Words

Memory does not return whole. It returns in fragments: the outline of a glass, the shape of a hand, the trace of a table once set for two. This is where Aliya Abs begins: in the aftermath.

In soft attachments, paint and line exist in different states of time. Some works are inhabited by figures and interiors; others are stripped back to objects incised into dark grounds, floating against pale unresolved fields. These are not sketches but the shape of memory itself: precise in outline, empty at the centre.

The works move through romantic relationships without fixing them, tracing hesitation, intimacy, absence, and the solitude that persists within closeness. Paris appears not as backdrop but as interior landscape, while still life objects return as quiet elegies for shared lives.

Abs develops a painterly language between appearance and withdrawal. Her figures emerge through layers, veils, and erasures, flickering between presence and disappearance. Faces are often withheld, opening space for recognition rather than description.

What matters here is not representation but the persistence of an image: how it forms, falters, and endures. Her paintings ask for time. Meaning does not arrive; it settles slowly. What remains is not grief but the trace a love leaves behind after it ends.

“This body of work is made of fragments of a love, felt, and eventually lost. It captures moments of intimacy, small gestures, and shared spaces that slowly fall silent.

There is quiet melancholy within them, but also a gentle sense of comfort. Paris appears as an inner landscape, a place where memories continue to exist and transform.

The series moves between holding on and letting go. It is an attempt to understand that even fleeting love can hold a sense of wholeness.”

— Aliya Ab

Aliya Abs lives and works in Munich, Germany. Born in Kharkiw, Ukraine, she completed her master's degrees at the National Academy of Arts in Lviv, Ukraine.