In Nataliia Telesheva's latest animation, anti-tank hedgehogs slowly become sunflowers, and artillery shells turn into strings of beads. It's a small, exact act of transformation — and, for an artist shaped by war and forced emigration, a way of holding onto tenderness without looking away from what caused it.
Nataliia Telesheva is a Ukrainian artist and motion designer from Kharkiv. She trained for five years at the Repin Art School in Kharkiv before enrolling at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts, and received her master's degree in motion design in 2020. Her work sits at the intersection of digital painting, traditional graphic techniques — pencil, ink, charcoal — and animation, combining realism with symbolism. Her art has been significantly shaped by the war in Ukraine and by her own experience of forced emigration to France.
Alongside her personal projects, Telesheva creates portraits of well-known public figures. Her work has drawn attention from a number of them: Ukrainian model and singer Dasha Astafieva used one of her pieces as a profile avatar, Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko singled out a portrait Telesheva made of him, Hollywood actress Catherine Zeta-Jones liked an original sketch of hers, and actor Jensen Ackles left an autograph on one of her digital works. A portrait she made of Hugh Jackman was purchased by his international fan site.
Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Paris and Auray, at the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, and at exhibitions of the Ukrainian diaspora in France, including in Nantes, where she also led a portrait masterclass.
Her current project is an animated work titled A Dream of Peace in Ukraine. It's an autobiographical reflection, drawn from her own experience of living through the war in Ukraine. Across the animation, anti-tank hedgehogs gradually turn into sunflowers, and artillery shells into strings of beads — symbolic transformations through which Telesheva explores the fragile coexistence of trauma, memory, femininity and hope.
"This work is also a self-portrait — an emotional attempt to preserve inner tenderness and humanity in the midst of war."
On the animation's red-background frames, viewers can also glimpse the bridge at Staryi Saltiv, in the Kharkiv region — destroyed in 2022, and since rebuilt. The piece is made using digital painting and animation, created without the use of AI.
The animation can be watched on YouTube. More of her work can be found on Instagram @teleshevart.