Ukrainian folk art exhibit showcases tradition and defiance

It’s a surprisingly upbeat show. These artists don’t use their art to make bold statements of resistance. Simply persevering in their craft is defiant enough, and they make art bountiful with intricate patterns, sparkling color, and dazzling designs — veritable declarations of the spirit of Ukrainian culture and sovereignty. Each piece is inscribed with symbols rooted in a history that predates the arrival of Christianity in the region in 988 CE. Some of the art forms on view are on UNESCO’s registry of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Ukrainian Easter eggs, known as pysanky, were given as talismans of good fortune, and to encourage the coming of spring and protect crops. The egg itself symbolizes the sun and spring’s renewal. Women dyed them after tucking their children in for the night, using a wax-resist method and dyes made from dried plants, ground up insects, or animal horns. The process was slow. Today, pysanky are produced more quickly, using dye in vinegar.

Artists such as Pasha Plytorak, a Hutsul artist from the village of Kosmach in the Carpathian Mountains, craft staggeringly dense designs woven with pattern and symbols — eight-pointed stars, looping eternity bands, wheat, flowers, and animals. Some designs wheel and spin like strands of ivy laden with blossoms; others are more sharply geometric.

Such patterns laid the groundwork for modernist Ukrainian art. Painter Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) was influenced by traditional embroideries, perhaps akin to the Cossack textiles from Zaporizhzhya on view in “Soul of a Nation.” “Cossack” means “free man,” and the practice of embroidery, like an emblem of freedom, nearly disappeared under Soviet rule and has since been revived.

As with the pysanky, tradition dictated proper ways to make these textiles. Only healthy needleworkers could stitch bridal embroidery, and they started on a Thursday morning under a new moon, according to exhibition wall text, every stitch invested with prayer and good wishes. What better garb for a bride to wrap herself in than the hopes and traditions of generations of ancestors?

Artist and ethnographer Rosa Kutasevych founded the embroidering group Tsvit Kalyny, after Ukrainian independence. The name means “Blossom of the Guelder Rose,” referring to a folkloric symbol of family and love. Kutasevych’s “Khortytsya Pisnya (Song of Khortytsya)” is an exquisite, double-sided gold-on-white wrap adorned with floral patterns recalling a tree of life. Zoya Doroshenko’s “Sunflower y Ukraine (Sonyashna Ukraiina)” has a similar motif arranged around three benevolently shining sunflowers.

“Soul of a Nation” tells stories of grit and patriotism in vibrant colors and matrixes of hope. Ceramicist Rustem Skybin’s family was deported to Uzbekistan in the 1940s when Soviets expelled Crimean Tatars en masse. Skybin returned to Crimea in 1996, where he opened a studio and reinstated a largely erased clay tradition. In 2014, Russia again invaded Crimea, and Skybin fled to Kyiv, where he works today. His ceramics, emblazoned with traditional patterning, are made with his original technique called Quru Isar (dry border). If a craft’s legacy is a tree of life, Skybin adds a new branch.

There’s plenty more to see in “Soul of a Nation.” Floral petrykivka paintings have roots in Dnipro, where women painted murals for their homes with inks made from vegetable juice. They are now crafted on paper with cat-hair brushes. Woodworks embedded with beads and mother of pearl made by Hutsul people are carved with patterns reaching back to the Neolithic era similar to those echoing through much of this art. It reads like sacred geometry. We are here, these works seem to say. We are not going away.

SOUL OF A NATION: VOICES OF RESILIENCE IN UKRAINIAN FOLK ART

At Fuller Craft Museum, 455 Oak St., Brockton, through Nov. 2. 508-588-6000, www.fullercraft.org