A year ago, Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute hosted the finalists of the Educational Ambassadors of the Kyiv Junior Academy of Sciences competition. Maria Gupalenko was among the bright, outstanding girls who presented their research achievements and demonstrated their intellectual and creative abilities.
At that time, she was a participant in the final stage of the competition-defense of the Junior Academy of Sciences. Now she is a student at the Institute of IATES, studying computer science. “Computer science is an interesting IT project that can be implemented in the most modern industries of today,” she says.
🖹
The girl recalls how impressed she was with the university at the time: parks and buildings - the territory of the young and for the young. In addition, congratulating the winners, the representative of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, the general partner of the event, emphasized: “We are honored to host you at KPI and we really want you to enter our university. We will do everything possible to help you realize your potential to the maximum, because KPI has these opportunities.” And so it happened: Maria entered Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where she is not only mastering her future profession, but also continues to develop her creative skills.
It is believed that a creative personality is characterized by openness to experimentation. This is exactly the case with M. Gupalenko. She used to sing in the Shchedryk children's choir, attended a journalism class, painted, and graduated from music school with a degree in violin. She was a member of the All-Ukrainian Youth NGO “Foundation of Regional Initiatives”, covered and popularized the activities of educational youth camps on social media. She was also interested in research on the reproduction of Ukrainian ethnicity in national cinema. “After all, cinema,” says the researcher, ”is a powerful tool that demonstrates the Ukrainian traditional system to a wide range of viewers. The clothes of the characters are important. In particular, the ethnic style reflects Ukrainian identity as opposed to the Bolshevik uniform (we are talking about the historical drama There Will Be People by Arkady Nepytalyuk - Ed.) So for Ukrainian cinema to be of higher quality, costumes must be chosen wisely.” In the future, she plans to create a blog to explore ethnicity in Ukrainian TV series.
Another of the student's hobbies, or rather a way to express her identity, is embroidery. Anyone who was interested in the recent KPI Talents competition would have noticed the skillfully embroidered Ukrainian shirts with original designs. It is simply impossible not to notice them! It is hard to believe that they were created by a novice craftswoman. The cross and rocking chairs, counted satin stitch, platband, dovbane, and grain stitch are the techniques used to skillfully create the patterns. “For many centuries, Ukrainians have been fighting for their freedom and wearing vyshyvanka as a symbol of their national identity,” says the embroiderer. She explains: “Each region has not only its own embroidery technique, but also its own ornamentation, traditional colors and details.” Thus, one of the shirts on display has ornaments from Ivano-Frankivsk region, while the other is a copy of the Sniatyn shirt from the Ivan Honchar Museum, embroidered and sewn by hand.
“I like to take on 'large-scale' works with a lot of embroidery,” the artist continues, ”I embroidered the presented shirts for about nine months each. By the way, these are not exhibition pieces, I wear them both on a daily basis and on special occasions (see photo). I feel very comfortable in them. Now I'm embroidering a man's shirt as a gift for my father. I tried to embroider a scarf with artistic satin stitch and gave it to my grandmother.” The girl continues to improve her skills at Nataliia Matveieva's master classes and at the Prekrasa Studio online school. For the next shirt, she plans to create a pattern on her own based on the photos.
And getting back to the Ambassador contest. Indeed, based on the example of M. Gupalenko, we can say that these are leaders who know how to learn, develop, set goals and achieve them. They are fascinated by Ukrainian meanings, which each of them seeks at her own level. Their involvement in the problems, in the development, in the future of the country fills me with hope that such wonderful young people will build the country. “After all, leadership is not only a primacy, but also a responsibility,” the student is convinced.