Each piece from the “Unexpected Happiness” series captures something remarkable about the human spirit. The sculptures feature a few moving sentences from the artist’s research, reverse-cast in stainless steel and captured inside a glass bell dome.

Featured text: “War radically changed the daily rhythm of our family’s life. Everyone must always be alert. Everything must be charged, fuel, water, & food. One thing changed for the positive though. I have a new sense of home, not in a place but within myself. I find it helpful for my mental state to create my home wherever I am now bringing some echo of what I had there, and build something new. In a way I truly found myself.”

ORIGIN (Ukrainian story, made in 2023): From artist’s research conducting interviews with Ukrainian people who have been displaced to the UK. Nicola launched an anonymous story collecting portal to collect people’s testimonials of how the war in Ukraine has affected them. Most of the stories are raw, and challenging subject matter. This one story showed an element of unexpected positivity, and has become part of the ‘Unexpected Happiness’ series of artworks which feature those rare stories.