A series of photos "Cystic" was taken in the summer of 2018 during the agonizing wait for the results of cytology.
At first I didn't feel anything, then my left breast got bigger, then it hurt and a bruise appeared. It all happened very quickly. The first doctor I came to scared me terribly, saying that in addition to a cyst the size of a chicken egg, neoplasms appeared inside. But she didn't say what to do with it. I had to look for another doctor. He ordered a surgery to remove the cyst and neoplasms. Everything that was extracted from the breast was sent for cytological analysis.
Fear, denial, emptiness, anger, pain — that's all I experienced for 3 weeks waiting for the results of the examination. I was looking for a way out, and documenting my feelings and my body helped me get through the endless waiting and horror. What if I have THIS diagnosis?
Gray photos reflect my stay in the gray zone of unknowing, uncertainty and expectation.
Warsaw, 2018
Cystic
The self portrait was made in 2017 as a statement of who I am.
It was an extremely difficult turning point in my life, which determined my future.
I came out of a toxic, abusive relationship and declared my strength and independence. Despite depression and deep emotional trauma, I found the strength to become a different person. I needed to use all my willpower to get together in pieces and declare myself. Through art and activism, I regained my right to be visible, the right to speak, the right to be myself. I started shooting a new project — a series of therapeutic photo shoots for women survivors of domestic violence. By helping other women, I was helping myself. I also actively promoted the ideas of feminism and body positivity in my social networks and photo projects. In Belarus during this period, it was quite difficult to openly declare yourself as a feminist, talk about sexuality and promote the ideas of visibility of women. I faced sexism and hatred, strangers threatened me and tried in every way to humiliate me. At the same time I felt support from other women, LGBTQIA community, and open-minded people around me. It was an important moment of my formation as an artist, a woman, a person.
Self Portrait
This portrait reflects all sides of that acute moment of time - strength and vulnerability, sexuality, aggressiveness, self-confidence, freedom to be yourself. It became a declaration of my new identity.
Picture was made in collaboration with Kate Shumak
45x30 cm
Archival print
Minsk 2017
#everydayifindnewpussy started as a declaration of individual femininity and sexuality. I have been concerned with these issues all my conscious life. Self-identification as a woman occurred at several stages. For a long time, I was resisting my reality of being a woman, successively going through various waves of feminism. The project marked my transition to the third one.
Having got rid of inner misogyny, accepting myself as a woman and at the same time not feeling like a person of the second sex, I proclaim my personal femininity with its all possible options, without trying to integrate into any gender concept of what a woman "should" be.
This project is both a joke and a challenge, an opposition to the Freudian concept of the penis beneficial for patriarchal society. By photographing different objects that resemble a vulva,
I try to draw the viewer into the game, in the search for the feminine principle in everything, thus paying attention to the important problems of women's invisibility, the attitude to them as "second-rate" people. At the same time, I choose completely different objects without getting stuck in flowers and fruits motives – delicate and beautiful images, replicated in pop culture. This is also a metaphor for accepting myself as I am: strong and weak, gentle and tough, uncomfortable and sexy. A declaration of a woman's right to be herself, to love herself, free from the existing stereotypes.
All photos were taken with iPhone 5s.
Minsk/Warsaw 2016—2020
#everydayifindnewpussy
The SURVIVOR photo project was born out of a series of therapeutic photo sessions for women who have experienced domestic violence. This is a project from women to women. A group of 9 woman made this sessions real. A total of 32 women and 17 children were photographed. The purpose of the photo sessions was to enable women who have experienced violence to find themselves again, to see themselves with new eyes, to declare the right to be themselves. Only 11 heroines were ready to show their face in public.
Many of women received the help of specialists from the public association "Radislava" or lived in a shelter for women and children affected by violence. This is a community of women united by a common problem and similar stories. There is still no law on countering domestic violence in Belarus. Fem. activist, founder of NGO "Radislava" Olga Gorbunova, who is also one of the heroines of the project, united many women around her to help each other. Some of the women who got into the shelter created by Olga later became activists and volunteers of the "Radislava" association. Olga has repeatedly conducted trainings for police in Belarus to improve their interaction with victims of domestic tyrants. The Government of Belarus promoted itself at the expense of the organisation in the field of freedoms and human rights, without providing legal or financial support to organisation.
Survivor
Each heroine of the project tells a frank story, about which it is customary to remain silent. By their example, they want to make the problem of violence visible, as well as support those who are afraid of being accused, rejected today. The one who does not have the resource and the belief that there is help. They talk about the strength to ask for help, to survive the pain, fear, despair, shame, guilt that they experienced, or were forced to experience. These are stories about finding yourself and regaining control over your life
Their faces are open, which means that there is no more fear here today. Fear of asking for help. Fear for their lives and the lives of their children and loved ones. Fear of being rejected and blamed by loved ones and strangers who find out. There is only the strength and desire to make violence visible, to witness. The strength to look at yourself and see yourself with your own eyes, and not with the eyes of those who have devalued, humiliated and insulted for years. The power to turn the private into the public. The strength to come to life, because violence is a small death. The desire to motivate those women who live here and today in a situation of violence to positive changes in their lives. The desire to rejoice and be.
Each of these women was subjected to violence. Violence is different, but equally terrible. Different people caused them pain and suffering. Spouses, partners, parents. Each of these women knows that there is a life "before" and there is a life "after". And he knows the value of this difference.
The path to a life without violence is a long and difficult path for everyone. Due to the insufficient number of effective levers of protection and support, severe psychological state, public censure of victims and interpretation of violence as the norm, women can live in a situation of violence for many years.
And even at the moment when a woman, regardless of her age and social portrait, realizes that she lives in a situation of violence, that is, identifies herself as a victim, she immediately finds herself in a systemic problem with many root causes, which means that the number of problematic moments that she needs to solve immediately is disproportionately greater than her own resources.
These portraits and the words of the heroines are the contribution, the contribution of the survivors, so that this resource becomes a little more.
Text: Dasha Tsaryk
Minsk 2017—2018
Flag was created for the 100th anniversary of women's voting rights in Poland.
Group exhibitions were held in Warsaw, Lodz, Poznan and other Polish cities. The flag was selected for display in MSN "Museum nad Wisłą" during the exhibition "NIEPODLEGŁE. WOMEN, Independence and National Discourse"
Warsaw 2018
Photo by Mikhail Leshchanka