Quiet by Anastasiya Ivanova
Anastasiya Ivanova, a Berlin-based Ukrainian multimedia artist, employs her photojournalism background to explore themes such as motherhood, solitude, interdependence, and the notion of “home”. Through photography and documentary film, Ivanova delves into often overlooked facets of daily life and the unspoken emotional landscapes that people inhabit. Her work not only captures moments but reveals deep emotional undercurrents, giving these emotions a palpable presence.
Ivanova’s approach, driven by narrative, merges photography with video, offering authenticity and immediacy rooted in her photojournalistic practice. Her work tackles both personal and collective subjects, exploring universal themes like family, isolation, and community dynamics, illuminating how shared experiences shape identity. Notable projects include AntiBabylon (2022), which documents cultural exchanges among former Soviet countries through performances by five poets, and a long-term project on the Lviv National Philharmonic (2017–2022), exploring the connection between musicians and their audience, both on and off stage. Her unique work Burnout Madonnas combines embroidery with photos of mothers overlaid with Lego blocks, symbolising the chaotic lives of caregiving women.
In Slon, Anastasiya led a drawing workshop encouraging children to create self-portraits, using creative methods to foster self-expression and strengthen community bonds across generations.
During her residency with Magic Carpets in Slon, Anastasiya created the short film Quiet – a deeply evocative exploration of war’s inescapable horrors, even in places seemingly untouched by conflict. Inspired by Slon’s rural stillness, the film contrasts natural calm with inner turmoil, examining the haunting presence of anxiety and grief for loved ones left behind. Quiet captures the pervasive imprints of war on the psyche, underscoring the inescapability of its impact.
The film combines visual and auditory elements to illustrate the impossibility of finding real solace in silence. Ivanova employs a unique narrative technique: voiceovers of real obituaries from her social media, commemorating lives lost in Ukraine. These are juxtaposed with serene images of Slon’s landscapes, creating a tense atmosphere that contrasts external peace with internal memory and grief. This tension highlights the complexity of post-traumatic experience, revealing how deeply intertwined one’s connection with loved ones remains, and how present war continues to be in the mind even far from its physical front.
Through Quiet, Ivanova offers a visual meditation on human fragility and the difficulty of escaping trauma. The contrast between nature’s peaceful beauty and echoes of suffering symbolises the inability to forget, even in seemingly peaceful settings. This amplifies the film’s message: that quiet is often a mask concealing psychological and emotional turmoil.
Anastasiya Ivanova’s residency with Magic Carpets was an opportunity for connection and reflection, both for herself and the Slon community. Amid a period of profound personal and collective change, Ivanova continues to give voice to universal themes of loss, love, and resilience, fostering a deeper and more empathetic understanding of the impact of war on the human spirit.
Artist: Anastasiya Ivanova (b. Ukraine, based in Berlin, Germany)
Sending Organisation and Curator: Jam Factory Art Center and Anna Gaidai
Residency Host: META Cultural Foundation (Slon village, Prahova County, Romania)
Practice: Multimedia artist
Collaborating Artists: Charlie Cauchi, Ruxandra Nițescu, Mihai Smeu
Curated by: Raluca-Elena Doroftei
Curatorial text by Raluca-Elena Doroftei