Natalia
Natalia is a visual artist.
After her dad Rudolf died in 2019, she began to create work around dementia and grief.
Her exhibition Letters to Forever ran in August 2025 at St Peter’s Church, St Albans.
“When my dad died, I thought I would be blocked. That I wouldn’t want to do anything creative. But I had an urge to do something. Not just sit and think, but to make something.
I started collecting broken things and bringing them into my studio. Bricks and pipes. Things that are not beautiful - ugly things. I was playing with them, trying to rebuild them, create something.
I didn’t know what I should be feeling. I had never had a grief of that magnitude before. I was really scared of death and loss. But because I was scared, I wanted to learn more about it. To find some answers.
I was very surprised by the way things started appearing. The ideas just came out of me.
With a blank sheet of paper and a pen, you’re in an intimate space. It’s just you and your thoughts. You can be yourself, be as vulnerable as you want, be angry, whatever.
I wanted to connect with my dad. I thought a letter could help me structure my thoughts; experience some kind of release. When I was young, that’s how we communicated - with writing.
But for a long time, I couldn’t write. So instead, I asked other people to write a grief letter to their person. I put out a call and got 215 letters back.
I would read a letter, think about the person who wrote it and draw the outcomes. Quickly and intuitively. I didn’t revisit, didn’t judge, didn’t make them perfect. That was my dialogue, my giving back.
I didn’t want to just hang them on the wall. I had this idea to make an enclosure. Something fragile-looking, not heavy, not solid. Translucent, with tiny pins. The drawings are around the outside as if they’re holding the words.
Looking after them, keeping them safe.
Other pieces emerged.
In one letter, the author said ‘Because you taught me how to knit, I’ve taken it up again.’ So I shredded some letters to make a yarn and I thought, ‘I’m going to knit for her.’ All those letters are connected, but it’s unfinished.
And I collaborated with someone to make a sound piece. It’s specially devised using frequencies that are healing for grief. It literally helps your brain rewire.
I researched which scents are connected with grief and made an aromatherapy oil using cypress as a base. Cypresses often grow in graveyards - they’re so tall that people believed they connected the earth with the heavens.
I created a dish to hold it in the shape of my palm - like it was a container, but it was also part of me. I put it under a cloche and replenished it every day.
I embroidered words from the grief letters on a voile; I engraved phrases on plaques and put them out in the churchyard like a trail.
I wanted it to be for everyone. Not overwhelming, not gloom and doom. People could take from it and connect on whatever level they wanted.
“I was very surprised by the way things started appearing.
The ideas just came out of me.”
This project has taken me completely out of my comfort zone. I’m not scared anymore.
I’ve learnt I can bring my dad in; I can create artwork about me and him. He left behind lots of unfinished sketches and I’m going to sit down with them, cut them up, finish them.
I’m asking ‘How can I continue his life in this reality?’ I guess I’m lucky that I have this creative force - I feel like I know what to do.
Because of this terrible thing, I became a different person. But I’ve accepted the changes I’ve been through. I’ve made grief a part of me. ”