Kozak

My project 'Kozak' documents Ukrainian soldiers living on the frontline, exploring how war disrupts place, identity, and memory.

‘Kozak’ is an ongoing project that explores the lives of Ukrainian soldiers stationed on the frontline, caught between two worlds: one democratic, the other imperial. The combat zone forms a liminal space in the land, a scarred, unstable zone lying between home and destruction, memory and uncertainty.

Warfare disrupts the very concept of place. It does not merely destroy the physical; it separates people from the landscapes that shape their identities, shaking the emotional and spiritual roots of who they are. What was once familiar becomes unrecognisable: homes are reduced to rubble, forests splinter, and the soil beneath their feet transforms into both a battlefield and a distant memory. These soldiers exist in a state of psychic dislocation, living in dugouts while carrying their inner landscapes with them.

They fight not only for territory but for meaning. Ukraine’s soil represents more than contested ground; it is an inner landscape shaped by ancestry, memory, and belonging. To destroy it is to inflict a wound on their very being. Russia’s invasion is not merely an act of military aggression but an attempt to erase autonomy, culture, and borders, a colonial mindset that reduces land to strategy and people to obstacles.

In this context, storytelling becomes an act of resistance. Through image and voice, this project documents lives on the brink of erasure, preserving fragile threads of personal and cultural identity that war seeks to sever. Amid a conflict overwhelmed by disinformation and spectacle, these testimonies reaffirm presence, humanity, and the right to be remembered.