Ida works with what's usually thrown away: an empty perfume bottle, its last trace of scent still clinging to the glass. Set in epoxy resin alongside dried roots, flowers and fruit, it becomes something else — a frozen moment of a fragrance mid-spill, never meant to fade.
Ida is the creative pseudonym of Karina Tarnashynska, founder of the handmade brand @minimoss.epox — described as "pictures made from perfume [bottles] and epoxy resin." She lives and creates in Dnipro, alongside a main job and a great many creative hobbies, driven by an unrelenting wish to show her work to the world. She began working with perfume bottles a year ago; before that came a string of other creative projects and work connected to design and decorating.
Her work rests on two ideas. The first is wabi-sabi — the Japanese philosophy of beauty in imperfection. The second is her own relationship to objects and her own experience: a belief that any object has the right to a second life, especially one that carries important memories, connections and the sensuality of a particular moment.
The technique she works in is called assemblage — a three-dimensional collage — which lets her draw out the full potential of both the bottle and the scent it once held. The idea took shape from a mix of experience, interests, personal taste, and, of course, time spent looking at other work on social media — though she considers her own pieces a unique interpretation of art made with perfume bottles. As far as she's found, no one else's work uses the kind of natural ingredients she brings into her pieces, or takes the same approach to choosing materials.
"As if the bottle had just shattered, and the whole pyramid of the fragrance spilled out and set on the glass."
Natural decorative elements — dry roots, flowers, dried fruit — are what let her create the effect of a "living" picture. For Ida, conveying the singularity and uniqueness of a scent is the core idea behind the work.
At the moment, most of her work is made to commission for perfume shops — decant sellers, distributors and others in the trade. For an audience, there's something strange and compelling about watching what usually gets discarded become a unique piece of décor — and it's that unusualness that has started drawing people to her pictures. A week ago, her first exhibition opened at a restaurant in Kyiv, where visitors can choose and buy a piece for themselves — the first time she's had this kind of experience.
She is only just beginning her path with these "perfume" pictures: half a year ago, she was still piecing her small venture together, one part at a time.
More of her work can be found on Instagram at @minimoss.epox.