For In Pieces, Sophia Bulgakova, Lia Dostlieva, Ola Lanko, Katia Motyleva, and Kateryna Snizhko, developed new works, affected by the ongoing war in Ukraine and made with a child in mind. While some projects directly address younger audiences or are inspired by children, others draw on the artist’s personal memories and experiences. What are the stories behind each project, how do five works come together in one publication, and what does it mean to produce a work with “a child in mind”? Editor and curator Elisa Medde will be exploring these and other poignant questions together with the artists.
In Pieces and the works in it, were commissioned by Growing Pains – an Amsterdam-based initiative working on the crossroads of visual arts, publishing, conversation, education and human connection that supports women and non-binary artists.
About the speakers:
Kateryna Snizhko (UA/NL) was born in Ukraine in 1984. She holds a Master of Law from the National Law Academy in Ukraine (2006) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2016). Since 2012 she lives and works in Amsterdam. For the past 6 years, Snizhko has participated in several group exhibitions, festivals and international fairs in The Netherlands, Japan, Ukraine, Austria and the Czech Republic. Her installation “TINI” was awarded the Best Artwork Award and Public’s Prize at Smart Illumination 2016, Yokohama, Japan, Honorable Mention and Public’s Prize of Steenbergen Stipendium 2016, The Netherlands. In 2020, Kateryna was awarded Young Tallent stypendium by the Mondriaan fund.
Lia Dostlieva (UA/NL) is an artist, cultural anthropologist and essayist. Her primary areas of research include the issues of trauma, postmemory, commemorative practices, and agency and visibility of vulnerable groups. As an artist, she works across a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, interventions into urban space, etc. She exhibited widely internationally at more than 40 venues, including Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania; Odesa National Art Museum, Odesa, Ukraine; MCK, Cracow, Poland; Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, Ukraine etc. Starting from autumn 2022, she is a resident of Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. In a duo with Andrii Dostliev, she represents Ukraine at the Venice Biennale 2024.
Io Ola Lanko (UA/NL) is a trans-disciplinary artist. From photography to immersive multi-sensorial installations, Lanko’s practice consists of layered structures combining intuitive and rational ‘wisdoms’. Over the past 10 years, she has built a continuous ever-changing practice employing mediums of photography, moving image, sound, sensory experiences and performance. Her versatile practice reflects and investigates existential knots and paradoxes through playfulness and lightness of her artistic methodologies. She has graduated from the photography departments at, both, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2012) and the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague (2010), and received a Master’s degree in sociology at the National University of Kyiv (2007). Her work was shown in numerous art institutions such as FOAM, the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Kunst Haus Wien (Vienna), Museo Amparo (México) and Musée de l’Elysée (Switzerland). Her works are part of the collection of the Nederlands Fotomuseum, ING, KPMG, LUMC, as well as various private collections.
Sophia Bulgakova (UA/NL) was born in 1997 in Odesa, Ukraine. She is an ArtScientist and interdisciplinary artist currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Sophia is working on the intersection between art, technology, and society, focusing on the relationship between light, perception, and imagination. Through various sensorial inputs in her installations and performances, she engages viewers, impacting their ways of perceiving reality and exploring new possibilities beyond it. Sophia studied sculpture in Kyiv and then got a foundation diploma in Photography and Time-Based Media at the University of the Arts London in the UK. After that, she graduated from the ArtScience Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of the Art and Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands. Her works were exhibited at CTM Festival (DE), Sonic Acts Festival (NL), Baltan Laboratories (NL), Mediamatic (NL), and Ningbo City Exhibition Hall (CN), among other places.
Katia Motyleva (UA/NL) is a Ukrainian photographer and video maker. She is exploring obsession with socially constructed beauty standards and how political changes can affect the destiny of a woman. Her approach is often rooted in the feminist interest. She highlights the discomfort women are living through, directly drawing on her own experiences. Through her work, Katia aims to open space for reconsidering the role of the woman. To confront the pressure to conform, acknowledging the twisted ideology of what it means to be a woman.
About the moderator
Elisa Medde edits, curates and writes about photography and visual culture. With a background in Art History, Iconology and Photographic Studies, her research reflects on the relationship between image, communication and power structures. She has been nominator for a number of prizes and chaired various juries, including the Luma Rencontres Book Award, Prix Elysée, and MAST Foundation for Photography Grant. She is currently a lecturer for the Master Photography at ECAL, Lausanne. Next to curating paper and physical spaces, her writings appeared on FlashArt, PhotoEye, Time Magazine, Foam Magazine, Something We Africans Got, Vogue Italia / L’Uomo Vogue, YET Magazine, the Aperture PhotoBook Review and many artists’ books. She has been Editor-in-Chief of Foam Magazine between 2012 and 2023, twice recipient of a Lucie Award for Best Photography Magazine. She is the recipient for the 2023 Royal Photographic Society Award for Photography Publishing.
