solomiya № 3
by soлomiya
€20.00soлomiya is a self-published magazine founded in April 2022 in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. Artists from Kyiv and Berlin collaborated to make this magazine, which aims to promote the visibility of common democratic and European values shared by people from Ukraine and other European countries. Being a platform of self-expression for the young generation of creatives from Ukraine, soлomiya is both an itinerant group exhibition and an art object in itself.
The third issue of Solomiya is as desperate as it is full of love, beauty, courage, and an unsettling longing for “a journey, an escape, and freedom,” as Yevhen, a young soldier from Odesa, puts it in War Dreams, a poignant series of portraits by Italian photographers Caimi&Piccini. While raising thought-provoking questions about masculinity in war through the recent work of Vsevolod Kazarin, Alex Mashtaler’s yet unpublished photographs juxtapose the innocence of youth with the unforgiving harshness of reality – a reality shaped by Ukraine’s colonial past and a present challenged by ongoing militarization.
Interviews by the Solomiya editorial team with Asia Bazdyrieva, Maxim Dondyuk and Henrike Naumann about their research and artistic practice offer further insights into these complex contexts in Ukraine, a country marked by a colonial past and a present of ongoing militarization. While Ivanna Kozachenko and the artist collective Commercial Public Art dissect the spatial strategies of the architecture built by Russian forces in the occupied territories of Ukraine, the writings of Lucy Zoria and Sebastian Wells offer diverse insights into the lived experiences of young Ukrainians abroad.
