Anzhela Lagoda is a Ukrainian artist and educator whose practice bridges traditional folk art and contemporary visual language. Specializing in Mykolaiv decorative painting—a unique regional form rooted in the Samarsky area of the Dnipropetrovsk region—she reinterprets inherited symbols and techniques through the lens of modern aesthetics and conceptual inquiry. Her works explore the enduring relevance of craft traditions and their potential to articulate memory, resilience, and cultural identity in a rapidly changing world.

Originally trained in economics, Lagoda made a deliberate turn toward art in adulthood, influenced by her father, the celebrated Ukrainian artist Petro Zhuravel. She holds a Master’s degree in Education and has pursued advanced artistic training at the European School of Design in Kyiv and through mentorship with renowned Ukrainian artists including Maryna Trushnykova, Tetyana Artikova, and Serhiy Aliyev-Kavyka. This dual grounding in academic and folk traditions informs her highly detailed and symbolically charged visual vocabulary.

Lagoda’s work is deeply research-driven, centered on the study of regional ornamentation, visual symbolism, and the emotional logic of form. Through her painting and applied arts, she cultivates a dialogue between inherited knowledge and contemporary experience. A recurring concern in her practice is the search for harmony—between past and present, nature and culture, individuality and collectivity. Rather than treating tradition as fixed, she engages it as a dynamic system capable of generating new meaning and aesthetic insight. Her recent works continue this investigation, using the rich floral and natural motifs of Mykolaiv painting to reflect internal and external worlds in states of transformation. These compositions, often resembling microcosms or self-contained visual ecosystems, evoke a sense of balance and continuity while acknowledging fragility and change. For Lagoda, this search for harmony is not only a formal concern but a philosophical one—expressing the need to hold complexity, history, and beauty in creative equilibrium.

Lagoda has exhibited widely in Ukraine and internationally, including in China and Bulgaria, and has participated in conferences, educational initiatives, and curatorial projects that foreground the cultural value of Ukrainian visual heritage. Across these contexts, her work speaks to the quiet power of ornament and folk tradition as vessels for personal and collective meaning.