[SERIES TITLE]
Also shown: KAF Young Art Prize finalists’ exhibition, Wrocław, 2026–2027
Source: UNHCR, Global Trends Report 2024.
Crown of Sorrow
barbed-wire crown with two suspended glass tears
25 × 23 cm
2022
Honoring political prisoners worldwide through this piece, which embodies a stark metaphor of pain, confinement, and unbroken dignity.
Political Prisoner Painting
Oil on canvas in frame
86 × 69 cm
2024
In the Belarusian penitentiary system, yellow tags mark political prisoners for intensified surveillance and continuous psychological pressure. Based on an actual uniform secretly smuggled into Poland by former prisoner Viktor Parkhimchyk, this painting acts as documentary evidence. Transforming a local artifact of repression into a forensic site, the canvas exposes the universal ontology of state violence. It demonstrates how totalitarian apparatuses use biopolitics to reduce human subjectivity to 'bare life'. Ultimately, the yellow tag transcends its role as a tool of systemic erasure, becoming a physical archive of pain and a symbol of unyielding resistance.
Purge
Hard plastic, wooden frame
90 × 65 cm
2024
This work visualizes the universal mechanics of political purges, demonstrating how repressive apparatuses employ similar algorithms of suppression regardless of geographic boundaries. Originating from a private tragedy—the story of an Azerbaijani scientist unjustly accused of state treason—I build a bridge of solidarity with victims of terror in Belarus and other authoritarian states. The rigid, restrictive plastic, resembling a garbage bag that conceals a voice, functions in my work as a direct physical metaphor for systemic isolation, where the freedom of human thought collides with the impenetrable rigidity of the state machine.
Photo: [PHOTOGRAPHER NAME]
