Mira Matchina — Multidisciplinary Artist.
Born in 1987 in Odesa, Ukraine. Currently based in France.
She creates costumes as a form of symbolic armor — a medium through which philosophical states and inner experiences can be articulated.
She graduated from the Grekov Odesa Art and Theatre College with a degree in costume design and previously studied at Art School No. 72 in Odesa.
Matchina has received several international awards, including First Prize at the Frankfurt Style Awards (2020) and Z-Generation (2020), as well as Third Prize at the International Young Designers Contest. Her work has also been recognized at the Fashion Film Festival in Croatia and presented during Georgia Culture Week in a pavilion curated by Diane Pernet.
Her practice encompasses a wide range of techniques, including sewing, embroidery, knitting, weaving, and crochet, alongside complex pattern-making, which she sometimes combines with drawing and painting.
Her works frequently evolve as part of a series, emerging from a central idea or inquiry. She
explores themes of vulnerability, isolation, beauty, and the memory of paradise, linking them to broader questions of identity, the boundaries of the imaginary, and its relationship to reality.
At the core of her practice lies the belief that material carries meaning. She approaches textiles as a living substance, emphasizing tactility and layering, which symbolises a bridge between who we were and who we aspire to become. In her work, costume is never static — it transforms in relation to the body, the environment, and the conditions in which it exists. In this sense, her approach is
informed by phenomenological thinking, where perception is shaped through sensory experience.
Matchina is particularly interested in how costume can exist beyond the stage or screen. Her works extend into the realms of performance and installation, interacting with their surroundings and becoming part of a larger environment. In this context, costume ceases to be a mere object — it
becomes an experience, something that can be lived and felt over time.
In her practice, she questions the limits of self-imagination—physically, psychologically, and
symbolically. She investigates the boundary between the real and the imaginary, asking which of the two holds greater authenticity, and approaches myth as a refined form of reality.
Her works don’t offer definitive answers, rather, they create a space in which these questions can be experienced.
