Pop-soviet
“The Soviet period always made me curious. I heard much about it but did not see it, because I was born a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” How does it feel to live in a utopian country of equality and a proletariat? How to be a part of so many different republics with their traditions and histories united into one great country? And what could have happened if history had been different?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet countries were inundated by a new exotic Western culture—food, clothes, television shows, etc. In this project the artist tries to imagine a world in which the merger of different cultures occurred much earlier—just after the Second World War, as if the Cold War never existed.
The American pop-art culture of comic books created by Roy Liechtenstein merges with Soviet photographs of everyday life from family archives. Everyday scenes turn into a playful comic book, fascinating the viewer with a fury of colors and almost metaphysical replicas.
Maryna Shtanko
Maryna was born in 1992 in Poltava, lives and works in Kharkiv. Maryna is a photographer who prefers the analog medium and works with archival photographs. She explores the themes of collective memory, rethinking the past, self-identification, and human interaction with the environment.
