The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits (2023-current) is a participatory arts project that uses historic photographic processes to create a visual archive bearing witness to the Ukrainians displaced by war.  The project aims to engage the community in creation of artifacts, offering space where participants feel visible, valued, and their stories are preserved. I am interested in emergent properties of collaboration and the agile process of shaping images, where the experience of making is centered. The project explores themes of belonging, liminality, and transition, focusing on the experiences of women who navigate the delicate negotiation between personal lives, communal backgrounds, and their emerging identities as displaced individuals. Ukrainian Portraits address the ambiguity, trauma, and loss that accompany migration, with the resulting images embodying a sense of transition, becoming, and being in-between — woven into the project's narrative of reclaiming one’s sense of self.  Guided by an exploration of collective histories of trauma, the project blurs the lines between subject, creator, and audience, while serving as a catalyst for communal image-making. Through photography, embodiment becomes a tool for healing, reflecting both nuanced perceptions of self and the universality of collective experiences.

The portraits were created during the summers of 2023 and 2024 and feature communities of displaced Ukrainians in Berlin, Stuttgart, Augsburg, Dusseldorf.

This project has been make possible with the support by Rubys Artist Grant and Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize.

Reframing Ukrainian Refugees, text by Lawrence Ross, BmoreArt Issue #16: Collaboration