Oksana Sklym is a Ukrainian painter known for her series depicting Soviet-era panel apartment blocks - the unassuming high-rises found in cities across the former USSR. Rendered in warm, glowing colors, her paintings transform these plain concrete buildings into scenes charged with nostalgia, their mismatched lit windows evoking childhood memories for many who see them.

Sklym grew up in Kryvyi Rih in the 2000s, and it's that neighbourhood - not the Soviet period itself - that her work returns to. Though some viewers online have accused her of "romanticizing poverty" or the USSR, she rejects that reading: her paintings are a personal remembrance of home, not a political statement.

She now lives in Lviv region with her young child, having been unable to return to Kryvyi Rih because of the ongoing shelling. Unable to visit the place that inspires her, she paints from memory instead. "This nostalgia warms me like a fire in cold times," she says. "I think that's a good thing, in moderation - as long as you don't live only in the past."

Her panel-building series has resonated widely and nearly sold out, with many commissions coming from Ukrainians living abroad - people who left years ago, or since the war began, and can't go back. For them, she says, her paintings offer something simple: "a way to hold onto a memory of their hometown."

When evening falls, oil on canvas, 50 X 40 cm, 2025.