Life of LGBTQ Community in Ukraine (2017-)

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Gender and sexual identity, androgyny and belonging to a community have been my artistic topics for the past five years. My new project about stories of LGBTQ community and individuals in Ukraine, country I was born and raised in, is the next step in that journey. Living in Germany for 12 years and coming out as queer there, which would be much more difficult if not impossible in my native country, gave me unique perspective on challenges of LGBTQ people living in Ukraine.

Because of the political events in the past years and the ongoing war in the East of the country, problems and challenges of LGBTQ community became less important or urgent in the eyes of Ukrainian society.

This brought me to the idea of the project, an artistic documentary about life of LGBTQ individuals in Ukraine, the challenges they face and overcome every day. As a capital of the country, Kyiv is more west oriented and therefore in some ways more open and progressive in terms of LGBTQ diversity. Yet life is still complicated in smaller and more conservative cities. That is why I am interested in showing the lives of LGBTQ persons in cities like Mykolaiv, where I was born, Odessa and Kherson, among others.

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This photography series is part of a bigger project that includes a video documentary. 

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Androgyny and abstract thoughts about absurdity of the term “femininity” are the central ideas of this ongoing project. Coupling bodies with mundane objects or putting them in abstract settings, I explore how it feels and what it means to be a woman, the complexity of emotions connected to absurd and unrealistic expectations of the womanhood.

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This project is planned as a book, but different parts of it can be excibited in various settings at any point.

Expectations play games with our perception. Familiar pieces, like a net of little details, put a filter on it and we see what the filter allows us to see.

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“Selective Perception” explores how differently people are perceived depending on partner standing next to them. In each pair of photographs, one of the couples is real another one is staged. In some cases, both couples were real at some point in their lives.

This series plays a guessing game with the viewer. It may start an inner dialogue and uncover some deep questions about themselves and their own filters.

Which couple is a real one? Which one looks staged? Which one looks more at ease with each other? Maybe both? There is no right answer at the end, so everyone is free to decide which couple looks “more real” to them.

Is this project about bisexuality or queerness? Or is it about our own filters and assumptions we force on the others?

For me, “Selective Perception“ is about viewer's expectations of sexuality, gender roles and norms. It is about how fast we put others in the boxes, based on our own background, presumptions and experience. For some, this series may become something entirely different.
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Laureate at DongGang International Photo Festival 2018

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Press
chonsun.com: Donggang International Photography Festival

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Androgyny scares, baffles and fascinates at the same time. Androgynous people live between the polarities of a binary society: visually they fit neither the female nor male stereotype. Their dual natures coexist in each world like cross-faded images contained in one frame. Separating them into two classic genders makes this polarity visible and present while mirroring back the viewer's norms and stereotypes.

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Finalist at Emerald Winter Pride Art Awards 2018
Laureate at Festival ManifestO 2017
Finalist at Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards 2017 (open category)
Finalist at Hellerau Photography Award 2017

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Winner of the 2016 PRIDE PHOTO AWARD - 1st 'Insiders / Outsiders' and  2016 Audience Award

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Press (selected)
NRC: Man of vrouw?
NRC: Er is zoveel meer dan man en vrouw, erken dat in de wet
GUP Magazine: It's all about Freedom: Pride Photo Award and Exhibition
RTLnieuws.nl: Lust, verdriet en angst: zo leven homo’s en transgenders wereldwijd
Queer.de: Die Inszenierung von Geschlechterrollen
Newsweek Japan: Sexual and Gender Diversity
NBC News: International Photo Contest Highlights LGBTQ Diversity
transgenderinfo: Yanovska wint publieksprijs Pride Photo
IHILA LGBT Heritage: Pride Photo Award
IHLIA LGBT Heritage: Oekraïense fotograaf wint publieksprijs succesvolle editie Pride Photo Award
Marijke Vonk: Gender complexity: Male/Female/Other
GaySite.nl: Winnaar publieksprijs Pride Photo Award

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As the conflict in Eastern Ukraine continues, Catherine Chapman and I decided to look closer at struggles of LGBTQ community in Ukraine. On of the results is this story about LGBTQ soldiers, changing the Ukrainian society with their service.

Ukraine's LGBTQ soldiers hope their service will change hearts and minds
Text by Catherine Chapman

"The Ukrainian military is not known to be particularly welcoming to LGBTQ people, but it needed bodies in early 2014 to confront Russian forces that had entered Ukrainian territory on their way to annexing Crimea.

That Ukraine was woefully unprepared for battle was obvious in several ways: outdated equipment; approximately 130,000 poorly trained troops (compared with 845,000 experienced Russian soldiers); an organizational structure widely accused of corruption; and the brutal hazing of new recruits and volunteers.

Many of those military newcomers have been gay and transgender soldiers who ignored prejudice and harassment to defend their country against invasion."

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/

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As the conflict in Eastern Ukraine continues, Catherine Chapman and I decided to look closer at struggles of LGBTQ community in Ukraine. The result is this story about a Shelter, a new home in Kyiv for LGBTQ people who have no other place to go.

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NBC OUT: Ukrainian LGBTQ Shelter a Home for ‘People Who Have Lost Everything’
Text by Catherine Chapman

"In a four-bedroom apartment found among a row of typical Eastern bloc-styled buildings in one of Kiev’s sleeping districts, a group of strangers from around Ukraine is making a fresh start in a place they now consider home.

They call their newly acquired residence “The Shelter,” a safe space where they are free to be themselves — a mix of ages, backgrounds and genders congregating under one roof, because their sexual orientation left them with nowhere else to go.

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Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/

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"About India" originated in January 2011 during a two-month journey to India, and was presented for the first time in June 2012 as part of a group exhibition on the topic of being alien.

Originally I hail from Ukraine. Before I turned twelve, my family and I had to move a lot due to my parents' work. Upon turning 22, I left on my own for Germany to pursue university studies, and can therefore relate really well to what being alien means.

But the experience I had travelling by myself in India cannot be compared to anything. It's not just the people and their traditions that are different; the entire environment is being perceived differently, and the environment itself perceives you in a different way. You cannot simply drift with the current like in Central Europe and blend in with the crowd, you are seen as exotic and receive attention accordingly. It's new, it's alien, and you must learn to deal with it.

I took my time and let the country influence me - as I have always done in any society where I was new and alien. You must be ready to take off the Western world goggles and approach this country and its people attentively, with an open mind. This way, you can get to know the people, their families and lifestyle. You can drink chai with the sellers in a market place, visit new places by adventuresome train rides, listen to foreign music and learn to love it, you can forgive the screaming apes for waking you up in the morning. In short, you open up for all things new and fascinating, and one day, when you let it, when you don't shut yourself from it, you feel that you have finally arrived, that you're home... you are no longer alien.