MOYA RIDNA
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Dates2022 - Ongoing
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Author
- Topics Fine Art, Archive
- Locations Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany
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Recognition
MOYA RIDNA is a personal revaluation of childhood memories, as mentally stored visual representations. It deals with themes such as notion of home and hope, loss and war.
In the work MOYA RIDNA I use photography as a medium to close the gap between memory and reality. «Life will overcome death and light will overcome darkness». This quote was published on the cover of The New York Times on the 24th of February 2022, the day of Russian invasion in Ukraine. I remember the family stories of my friends from Georgia, Syria and Palestine. The war, as phenomena in the human history is normality rather than an exception. You understand it once the war comes to your Home. One day can change everything, and everything can change in one day.
I took the camera because I wanted to remember. I photograph to remember. Probably It’s the only way to change things. Look at everything again, very slowly. Probably, we need to learn the great beauty from the deepest pain. The ongoing project Moya Ridna is a story of war, loss and hope. I avoided using devastating graphic images from media to depict the war, and searched for visual metaphors representing my family experience in these times instead.
«All photographs are memento mori» - Roland Barthes. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt. This body of work is an exploration of symbols in the visual language, combining photography, archive pictures and cinematic stills. It's a personal revaluation of childhood memories, family relationships put in the context of war. Dedicated to my mother.
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Moya Ridna (ukr. моя рідна) means my familiar, my dear, my beloved one. It’s mostly used with nouns, that in Ukrainian language are female, e.g.: mother, earth, language (мати, земля, мова). This word combination is mostly known from the classic Ukrainian folk song Ridna matu moya (Dearest mother of mine) performed by Kvitka Cisyk.
