Load Bearing Walls

The exhibition "Load Bearing Walls" presents a series of dollhouse-scale architectural models by Ukrainian artist and architect Daria Khozhai (born 1994). In her work, she combines art, architecture, and psychology to explore how spaces can absorb and preserve emotional and historical trauma. In this way, the language of architecture transforms into a language of memory and mourning.

The models are based on both completed projects (on view at the Fenix ​​​​Museum in Rotterdam, the M17 Art Center in Kyiv, and the Dordrechts Museum) and future full-scale installations. They are miniature echoes of places that once existed or will be recreated on a human scale. Each model bears the burden of memory within its walls: houses marked by violence, loss, displacement, and silence. Crafted from therapy diaries, worn fabrics, and family heirlooms, they translate personal experiences into spatial form.

In "Load Bearing Walls," the intimate becomes political and the small becomes monumental. Each structure is both home and wound, an emotional architecture that bears the invisible burden of loss and yet endures.