From issue: #20 The Graduate Issue 2023
Sonechko, Yak Ty? [Sunshine, How Are You?] by Varvara Uhlik considers the identity of Ukrainians who, like the artist, grew up after the Soviet Union. Born five years after the fall of Soviet rule, Uhlik was often told how lucky she was to have avoided the regime, yet her childhood was informed by this era’s culture. She experienced the strict discipline of the Russian empire, for example, and grew up in the east of the country, surrounded by Soviets including her parents, teachers, and neighbours. At the same time Uhlik remembers a happy childhood, eating her mother’s sour cherry dumplings and climbing trees. These contradictions have left her with many questions about her Ukrainian identity, and these questions have intensified following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Uhlik is now based in London and is unable to visit her family back home. She is therefore using photography as a means to travel back to east Ukraine and her own past, and to de- and re-construct her childhood memories.
Born in 1997 in Dnipro, Ukraine, Varvara Uhlik studied Photography and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Netherlands, and just graduated from the BA Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts. Uhlik’s work often blends fiction and reality, creating absurd and comic environments through which to process complex emotions. Her work has been exhibited at Southwark Park Galleries, London in 2023, and The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague, in 2022.
FInd out more about Varvara Uhlik here.
