Close to people | Stories from Bethel
Teddy bears, tulips and icons
His new work, the icon "Mary with Baby Jesus", is to be immaculately beautiful. That's why Mykola Kryshtafovykh works with great concentration. Slowly but extremely precisely, the 39-year-old stitches the embroidery needle through the stretched fabric from above. With the same hand, he picks up the needle again on the underside of the embroidery hoop and pulls the thread through. The picture - a finely beaded embroidery - takes shape.
Mykola Kryshtafovykh can only use his left hand when embroidering. His other hand is severely restricted due to nerve paralysis and rests on his lap. However, this does not prevent the mentally impaired resident of Ebenezer House in Bielefeld-Bethel from working on his pictures with great ambition.
Embroidery is Mykola Kryshtafovykh's great passion, as it is for Vitalli Stetsun, who is also cared for at Ebenezer House. Around 80 refugee Ukrainian children, young people and men with disabilities live at the centre. Like Mykola Kryshtafovykh and Vitalli Stetsun, many of them take part in a creative programme that takes place twice a week. The main focus is on drawing and painting with freelancer Paul Schulz. However, there are no strict guidelines. If you want, you can also be creative in a completely different way - and embroider, for example.
For Mykola Kryshtafovykh, the creative programme is an important change of pace when he returns from the Bethel Basan workshop after work. "I need a task, something to do," he says. It was very stressful for him when he had to leave his embroidery hoop behind in the hostel near Kiev when he fled Ukraine. He was all the happier when he was given a new hoop by a member of staff. The icon he is currently working on is the first picture he has created in Germany. Due to his disability, Mykola Kryshtafovykh needs a lot of time for his embroidery. Nevertheless, he does not want support. "He is very ambitious and insists on self-determination and independence," says Paul Schulz.
22-year-old Vitalli Stetsun is no less passionate about embroidery. He is currently embroidering a red rose. Paul Schulz selected the pattern for the illustration for him. "I don't have any particular preferences for my motifs," says Vitalli Stetsun, pointing to a selection of his works: bees, strawberries, tulips and a teddy bear in dungarees. However, he does come up with one speciality: "Things that remind me of my home country, like certain flowers, I really like them!"
Vitalli Stetsun learnt embroidery in a workshop in Ukraine. This craft is not difficult for him, he emphasises. Like his flatmate Mykola Kryshtafovykh, he uses embroidery as a distraction. "It's a good way to relax and take your mind off things," he says. Embroidery has helped him to stop feeling homesick. "I now feel very much at home here," emphasises the young man, who works in the Grabe workshop in Bethel.
Text: Gunnar Kreutner
Photos: Thomas Richter
This story simply told
Mykola Kryshtafovykh and Vitalli Stetsun love to embroider. Both are cared for at Haus Ebenezer in Bethel. Around 80 refugee Ukrainian children, young people and men with disabilities live at the centre. All of them have fled Ukraine because of the war there.
