Thresholding

Thresholding is a visual poem of displacement, embodiment and belonging, exposed through meditated pinhole long exposures. These self-portraits naturally emerged, reflecting my search for presence and grounding across spaces I keep finding myself in.

Thresholding is an ongoing project, in which I explore embodiment and the search for grounding through analogue and experimental pinhole photography, using meditation and presence as tools and objects to capture. Created across different countries and temporary homes, since I became nomadic, I capture myself in states of transition, confusion, fragmentation, belonging, separation and union - with myself and the worlds around me, as it shifts in response to my inner state, somehow. Speaking of inner states - I use meditation and somatic movement to help myself and my body to feel more safe, and this naturally became the tool for my art - through this process, I approach slowness as a way of perceiving and inhabiting the world differently, cutting away the rush and bringing presence on the forefront, embodying it and embracing every space and time within it.

The project emerged during a period of personal and geographical instability, shaped by migration, continual movement and the experience of rebuilding my understanding of home. Born in Ukraine, moved to England in 2012, and now living between places for the last two years, I became increasingly aware of the body as the only constant territory carried across borders. Through long exposures, I try to register emotional states that resist direct representation: waiting, disorientation, intimacy, memory and return.

The exposures often last several seconds or minutes, demanding stillness, surrender and collaboration with unpredictability (happy accidents are my favourite :). Rather than producing fixed documentary, the images become traces of time passing through the body, like a movie. Identities remain fluid and continuously in process of change - the only constant there is, I discovered. Windows, thresholds, reflections, lights and shadow recur throughout as spaces of transition between inner and outer worlds.

I resonate with the idea of the archipelago through my fragmented visual language and its understanding of identity as something dispersed across multiple spaces, relationships and memories. Each image is an island in itself: autonomous and connected to others through emotional and psychological currents, and reoccurence. I am interested in how contemporary existence is shaped by rupture and distance, while still searching for forms of coexistence, softness and connection within instability, as well as reconnection to tangible things like film, analogue techniques, pinhole, as well as body, stillness and deep observation.- I truly believe these are the most important thing to highlight and harness in this world.

Rather than seeking resolution, Thresholding inhabits uncertainty as a generative space — some where vulnerability, slowness and attention become ways of resisting fragmentation and remaining present and attentive within continual movement and chaos.