The Me Before The War No Longer Exists: Ukrainian Portraits (2023-current) is a participatory project that engages the community of Ukrainians impacted by war. Using photography as a medium for social practice, I work with participants to create portraits that reflect their evolving identities as they navigate displacement. 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, reflecting the delicate negotiation between personal lives, communal backgrounds, and the emerging identities of displaced individuals. Ukrainian Portraits address the ambiguity, trauma, and loss that accompany the experience of migration. The resulting images embody a sense of transition, becoming, or being in-between woven into the project's narrative of reclaiming one’s agency.  Through shared presence and creative collaboration, the project blurs the lines between subject, creator, and audience, creating a unique artistic experience that opens a space for dialogue and reflection.

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