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Vacuum


 2025
























After my Ukrainian mother got diagnosed with breast cancer right at the peak of the Russia/Ukraine war, becoming aware of her stress and mortality made me reconsider what parts of our identity we have suppressed in order to adapt to a comfortable life as a family of immigrants in America. While my grandparents refuse to leave Kharkiv, Ukraine, serving their lifelong community throughout the immense suffering, we have chosen to migrate, trying to save our bodies from stress. Why do some of us choose to flee? And what counts as survival? 

In an attempt to make sense of these questions and reconnect with a family lost to distance and time, I have combined a series of observations using photography and journal-style writing, incorporating medium format film, a miniature toy camera, and digital screenshots from family video calls and texts. 

Sitting between regions of Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States, this project takes form in a handmade book, designed and printed entirely by the artist. Through pictures and writing that draw attention to the more tangible aspects of daily reality, I examine how cultural and political experiences across nations and time have shaped my family’s and my own varied choices and understandings of life.












































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