Artist
Sviatlana Stankevich
A belarusian photographer working with documentary and conceptual photography. Graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of the Belarusian State University шт Minsk. Graduate of the Academy of Documentary Photography and Photojournalism “Photographics”, St. Petersburg, Russia. Scholar of Gaude polonia fellowship supporting the Ministry of Culture of Poland. Participant of personal and group exhibitions in Belarus, Lithuania, Georgia? Russia, Poland. Publications: Bird in Flight, F-Stop Magazine, Takiedela.ru, republic.ru, Private, SEEN Magazine.
In my work I focus on the theme of the culture of remembrance; I worked on projects about the place of mass shootings near Minsk by the Soviet authorities in the 30s and 40s, and about the liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster as a reclaimed material of the tragedy and the consequences of building a new nuclear power plant with Russian loans. I use digital and analogue photography, as well as collages and archive photos. In early drafts talked about personal transformation. I lived in Minsk, work as a journalist for a Belarusian portal Reform.by, had to leave Belarus in 2021 and currently live in Poland. Here I continue my journalistic work and at the same time shoot a project about forced migration, using my family, which was split up in 1939, as an example. My project deals with private and general questions: about the particular "homelessness" of people from traumatic periods of history and attempts to get rid of this feeling, about the sensitivity of entire nations as a result of political decisions, about the problems of self-identity, about the search for home.
Liquidation
Belarus more than other countries suffered from the Chernobyl disaster. Radionuclides contaminated almost 23% of the territory. Gradually, the state returns the land for economic use, the liquidators lose their benefits, and a new nuclear power plant is being built in the north-west of the country. In 2021, the first unit will be put into commercial operation. On April 26, 2022, the reactor of Unit 2 was physically commissioned. The tender for the project was won by a Russian company, and it was carried out on Russian credit.
Rehabilitated lands, deprivation of benefits, construction of a new nuclear power station are things of the same order, liquidation the memory of the disaster, which took one half-life of cesium-137.
At first the project Liquidation was conceived as a typology of absence, a series of liquidators, a faceless person who disappeared for the state, which could not be identified by any signs, as well as it was impossible to recognize radiation. But liquidators did not disappear - like all of the radioactive cosmos which was materialized in people, objects, places that became waste materials of the disaster.
Since 2015, young Portuguese photographer and storyteller Maria João Salgado has focused primarily on documentary photography, developing projects on human rights and alternative living communities. Recently, her work has taken on an increasingly artistic approach, incorporating personal themes for the first time.
Carlos Trancoso lives and works in Porto. His work uses photography as a means to explore the way humans relate to technology, combining fictional and documentary approaches in a compelling photographic language.
Born on the island of Madeira, Nuno Serrão is a photographer and filmmaker whose work is informed by dialogues between science and contemporary art. We hope that his participation in FUTURES will further strengthen his aesthetic approach and critical outlook across future projects.
Sviatlana Stankevich is a Belarusian photographer working with documentary and conceptual photography. Her work focuses on cultures of remembrance and history, with projects covering everything from mass shootings by Soviet authorities to the Chernobyl disaster.
Emergent Ukrainian photographer Xenia Petrovska is based in Kyiv. Her works are rooted in the mysterious and surreal realities, however there are some indirect social contexts. Through FUTURES, we believe Petrovska can build upon the conceptual bases of her projects.