Sweden has become a home for thousands of Ukrainian women and children – families without fathers. Children grow up with absence as part of everyday life, and these traumas are shared in Swedish schools, playgrounds, neighborhoods, and across society.
Ukrainian families have gradually integrated into Swedish society, and the Roses of Ties have become a symbol of their experiences and presence.
Roses made from leftovers ties, collaboratively created by Ukrainian and Swedish women, are acts of care, memory, and shared processing of loss. Worn close to the heart, they transform absence into remembrance and connection.
Through the Roses of Ties project, the war is remembered not only through numbers and tragedies but through women’s experiences: why we give birth, how life continues, and how women on both sides of borders create spaces where life persists despite the pain and emptiness of war.
The Roses of Ties project is polyphonic and invites other women to create roses of ties and be part of this collective gesture, reflecting peacebuilding, dialogue, mediation, human rights – and a redefinition of power through equality and care rather than force.
The exhibition includes the Roses of Ties photo series, a short video showing the hands-on process of making roses from ties, a collection of ties hanging from a tree branch as an installation casting shadows on the floor, and the documentary Weaving, produced by New York–based film producer Hsuan Yu Pan.
