'Photography Saturday' returns, the usual appointment to discover the photographic language, curated by Pino Miraglia, who on Saturday, March 2 at 11:30 AM, presents, within the section Reconnaissance, dedicated to young authors, the work of photographer Sofiya Chotyrbok.
Ukrainian visual artist, living in Milan, Chotyrbok graduated in photography at Cfp Bauer in 2019. Her research focuses on the theme of identity in post-Soviet society and on the archive as intimate and domestic memory, transformed into universal human matter through photography, video, and fabric. Her works have been exhibited in major international festivals and museums, including Triennale Milano, Paris Photo Off, Odesa Photo Days, Mana Contemporary (Chicago).
Among the various projects of Chotyrbok, presented in Sala Assoli, there is Home before Dark, a work of strong identity value. The creative process was triggered by a biographical episode: the artist's renunciation of Ukrainian citizenship for the acquisition of Italian citizenship.
Since February 2020, Sofiya Chotyrbok has embarked on a series of trips to Ukraine, rediscovering her belonging to the post-Soviet context, whose borders are today more blurred and complex than ever.
The starting point of the artistic work is the creation of an archive, the place of memory by definition, materialized in a chruščëvka (Soviet apartment) and in the objects and images contained in it, including symbolic relics at the same time familiar and alienating. It is in the familiar patterns of carpets and family photos that the research unfolds, making visible, without filling them, the voids of memory through a series of camouflages, erasures, and concealments.
Sofiya Chotyrbok realizes her projects using different languages, combining self-portrait, staged photography, collage, and archival research, digging beneath the icons that shape collective identities and revealing in this way the nostalgia for a lost past in the folds of a secret.