PORTRAITS

Total 3 years of life in China. About yourself and people.

After 3 years living in China I am sick of striking culture difference that makes me not to come back to this country and the fact that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

All conversations about it are the reason of my silence, the silence of my friends who couldn't find any words after my story about life in China.

My hightened emotional background created the idea of the project a little bit blurry at that moment. Wherever you live you will be unhappy if you want it. And you want to. The point is in people not country.

I went outside and make myself smile and talk to people, ask them to take a picture. Generally, China is convenient country. Here people got used to cameras shooting around. They don't care.

My personal goal was to step outside of my comfort zone and stop looking at the people heartlessly.

Common purpose was to convey my life experience living in China. Make people know about this country not through mass media but through the eyes of inhabitants, tourists with all details of real live. It causes people' s moving from Ukraine, for instance, to China.

The series of portraits carring carelessness, blur, certain ambiguity, messy aesthetics refers to my difficult, unclear attitude to all what surrounds me in this slattern, messy China.

First of all, people’s eyes are blurred as soon as mine being opened for tries to understand them meet with “closed” eyes of Chinese people. I had a lot of conversation with different people, heard many stories – that’s hard to understand and take each other.

When your interlocutor is always closed to hear and listen this situation makes some problem. In spite of this, we have common view on life, routine. Here is the reason why I wanted to write down my thoughts, Chinese thoughts on mixed up photos. Wanted to show that Ukraine and China are very similar despite all contradictions.

I have been living here for almost 3 years and I’m sure there is no better place than home, motherland, people you understand either on speech or mental level. I was trying to convey my thoughts, impression about China and their attitude to my life, my country.

We are similar. Not good as in the Garden of Eden.

I wish people’s ideas were connected with their body. That’s why I expressed thoughts on photos. Perhaps this method is not new, even rude to all of us but the idea was to show the main theses clearly. You can feel my weariness, accumulated emotions and negative energy. And the purpose was to represent all of this through the project. If this touches at least one person I succeed.

The theme: to show that difference between countries but correctly the indifference between them. The thing is in people inside who are the same around the world.

To blur the eyes I used corrector instead of highlighter to save eye-line clear. The light should be at least in the eyes unless in thoughts.