About Artists

Sestry Feldman

Sisters Michelle and Nicole Feldman
The Feldman sisters are the twin duo Michelle and Nicole. Born in 1996 in Dnipro, they lived there for 18 years, engaging in creativity instead of attending school since childhood. Their parents sent them to school only from 6th to 9th grade, after which they continued homeschooling, focusing on drawing, music, and dance.

“Our parents didn’t like school themselves, so they told us if we didn’t want to go there, we didn’t have to. But everything was great because we always had company at home: brothers, sisters,” says Nicole.

In a family with six children, the girls were always together with their older and younger brothers. The older sister works with cargo ships, the brother is into acting, the younger one does tattoos and clothing design, and the youngest sister, who is 17, is still figuring things out. The mother has always been passionate about mountaineering, journalism, and drawing. They met their father only at the age of 8 because he was a political prisoner under Kuchma. He was sentenced to 11 years but released after 4. The family always supported creative endeavors:

“Mom told us that Dad was on a business trip, and we could write him a letter or draw something for him. We drew a portrait for him, and he replied with a letter, I don’t remember exactly, but he said it was a masterpiece. And we didn’t see him then, it was like mysticism – if Dad said it was a masterpiece, then we had to draw all our lives. That was a kind of sign,” recalls Michelle.

In Dnipro, they received orders for painting a rehabilitation center for teenagers and illustrations for an English-language book. After that, they decided to live independently. In 2014, they moved to Kyiv, where they initially lived in a hostel for several months. There were always foreigners, conversations, interesting people, and that’s where street art and commissions began, whether for the cover of a music release or illustrations for a book.

They started doing street art a month after moving, inspired by the movie “The House” by director Jan Artus-Bertan, addressing environmental and social issues such as deforestation, forced labor, and global warming. Their first attempt to convey the problem through art was a series of murals in the subway on European Square.

Motivated by the film, they decided that only veganism and they had to convey it to people. Hence, the graffiti “Earth” on the frying pan. It was like childhood – genuine anger, but then it passed because you understand that you are also part of this system,” note the Feldman sisters.

Among their series of works are “Dreams,” “Theories of the Apocalypse,” and “Theories of World Creation.” During the full-scale invasion in Lviv, Dnipro, Kyiv, and Odesa, protective amulets appeared – motanki (both painted and partially sculptures made of mounting foam) and two decks of Tarot cards with images of Ukrainian cities. The card series for fortune-telling took part in collective exhibitions of Ukrainian artists such as Smereka in Paris, War Reports in Prague, WithDraw the War in Tel Aviv, and Alarm Reset in Kyiv at the Avangarden space. In addition to these exhibitions, there is the “City Exit” – a personal exhibition of works in various materials created over the year: from acrylic paintings to objects made of mounting foam. Another series from 2022-2023 is the modernized Cossacks painted on the streets of major cities in Ukraine, where Nicole and Michelle are currently working in Zaporizhia.

Apart from street art and exhibitions, the Feldman sisters are involved in animation. In February 2022, the animated series “Yoyo” was released with five episodes, originally conceived as yoga videos for children but turned into a utopian (or not) story about artificial intelligence, the issue of chipping, and the life of the character Yoyo in a world of square emotionless humanity.

The cartoon was in the making since 2020, and they made the protagonist recognizable by his silhouette influenced by “The Simpsons.” At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the artists created political animation about the war in Ukraine and were invited to create a mural in Brussels with European artists as a sign of friendship between Ukraine and Belgium.

Without entering university, the artists continued self-development through movies, lectures by Robert Sapolsky, and separately mentioned the influence of the TV series “Breaking Bad” on Nicole and the book “The Three-Body Problem” on Michelle.

They most often listen to techno music but remain open to new genres. In their free time, they sing and spend time with their brothers, who also moved to Kyiv.

In their works, both paintings and graffiti, Michelle and Nicole most often use acrylic paint. Their mother introduced them to this material in childhood. The use of mounting foam was due to a curfew to quickly paste street art, and the idea came from a friend of the artists who made a DJ table and ceiling from this material in his establishment.

The artists continue to experiment with forms and narratives in exhibitions and on the streets.