Xenia Petrovska (b. 1988) is a Ukrainian photographer. She studied at both the MYPH art school and the Kyiv School of Photography. Petrovska has participated in numerous group exhibitions across Ukraine and Europe; she was selected as a Fresh Eyes European Talent by GUP Magazine in 2021 and for the Futures Photography platform in 2022. She is a member of the Ukrainian Women Photographers Organisation.
In my project "At the origins" I establish dreamlike and mysterious sceneries of my native village by examining the concept of home and belonging. The vision of home, which is rooted in my childhood memories, is some kind of personification of the landscape, where you definitely will return in reality or in your memory.
These photographs exhibit familiar sights of my childhood. They remind me a dream which helps to reveal the meaning of a homeland as a peculiar microcosm of a human being; a homeland as a sacral place in our consciousness.
The blossoms on the grave (2022)
The blossoms on the grave are what we become after death. Portrait of a person without a
person. This is an attempt to think about the past, present, living, dead, waking, and sleeping.
Displacement (2020 - in process)
It’s a collection of uncanny images unbothered by logic, place, or time. Provoking
feelings of discomfort, marvel, and most of all confusion. A strange, odd and absurd
dreamlike depiction that is short of any answers. I use dream logic to blur the lines
between contradictions: past, present, living, dead, waking, and sleeping. This is an
attempt to think about the concept of perceiving what is visible and what is not.
Personal space (Kyiv, 2019)
The following photo captured a moment of human presence in the self-affiliation which isn't violated by anyone else. The possibility of human's inside harmony with oneself, created by the peculiar charm of solitude.
Maybe this state of being helps us to cognize and evaluate ourselves,or to comprehend our own significant value. It also can help us to view ourselves from outside.
War Diary. Catastrophizing (2022)
I was in Germany when the full-scale invasion began and planning to return to Ukraine in April. I had been living between the two countries for 7 years. After February 24, it seemed that life stopped forever. Negative foreboding, the anticipation of the worst, and the scale of the consequences consumed me totally. My brain was visualizing and drawing fear. In these photos I captured my emotional state after nightmares, watching the news, and reading messages from my relatives in Ukraine.
