Home is Where We Are

Home is Where We Are by artist Yuliya Semenova is located in the Washington Square West neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This piece is a meditation on being an immigrant while witnessing your home country in a midst of war. Semenova hopes this mural can help the viewer feel the artist’s gratitude to Philadelphia for welcoming her, and her hope that life will always find its way out of destruction.

The mural is part of Small Walls, a Mural Arts Philadelphia program created to amplify emerging and underrepresented artists. It provides them the opportunity to create and lead their first mural project, while amplifying the artist’s creative expression and skills. The murals are meant to be on display for a year, with the intention to rotate each site to another artist to provide additional opportunities. For this first (2024) iteration, three artists who have worked with Mural Arts in the past couple of years as artist assistants were selected through an RFQ and selection panel. Featured artists included Jaq “Jingle” Masters, Ibi Padrón Venegas, and Yuliya Semenova.

To celebrate the installation of these three Small Walls murals, an artist talk event was held at Paradigm Art Gallery on May 21, 2024. The artists had the opportunity to discuss their experiences with the production of their murals and their dreams going forward.