Yana Kononova is an artist with an academic background in sociology (PhD). She was born on Island in the Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan). During the First Nagorno Karabakh War, her family emigrated to Ukraine. Yana graduated from the Photoschool of Viktor Marushchenko and then studied the photography course during the long-term programme from Image Threads Collective (USA). She won the Bird in Flight Prize for the Emerging photographer nomination in 2019 and is a winner of the Hariban Award in the Benrido Award nomination in 2022. Her work has been exhibited in Ukraine and abroad.
The artist’s work is informed by her geographical experience, inspired by both romantic and naturalistic worldviews, between which there is a tension. Her practice is wavering in contradiction between sensually-based and a more reflective or conceptually-based approach to work. Her interest in natural forces as well as highlighting the extraordinary and excessive features in human nature – this is her starting point. At the same time, she is committed to observation and detachment in her practice, favouring fact and impersonality over the imaginative, symbolic and supernatural in the fictional portrayal of reality.
“Radiations of War”
Portfolio: Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė They work in multiples across performance, painting, sculpture, fragrance, and video installation
Dorota Gawęda (1986, Lublin, Poland) and Eglė Kulbokaitė (1987, Kaunas, Lithuania) are an artist duo founded in 2013, based in Basel (CH). Both are graduates of the Royal College of Art in London (2012) and founders of the YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP ( 2013 -2021).
Transfusing different bodies of knowledge across space and time, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė nurture a research-based practice that weaves together seemingly disparate fields – ecology and technology, science and magic, nonhuman intelligence and shared speculation.
