Yana Kononova
Yana Kononova is a Ukrainian artist working with camera-based material practices, writing, and expanded print techniques. Her work approaches landscape as a form of historical articulation and a sensitive terrain within ecocritical and speculative frameworks. She explores the tactile qualities of the photographic image, navigating the threshold between material process and visual representation. She holds a PhD in Sociology and a diploma in Art & Curatorial Practice from the New Center for Research & Practice. Kononova is the recipient of the Bird in Flight Prize for Emerging Photography (2019) and the Hariban Award presented by Benrido (2022), and was nominated by FOTODOK to the FUTURES talent network (2023). Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2023), the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM, 2024), and Faktura10 — a key initiative of Ribbon International (2025). Her work has been widely exhibited internationally in Ukraine and abroad.
Thresholds
2024–present
Digital print on gabardine, installation
The starting point for this work was the image of the iconostasis in an Orthodox church — the boundary between the altar and the nave, adorned with angels, saints, and symbols arranged in a specific hierarchy. This symbolic threshold between spaces resonated with the artist’s perception of reality during the war, when the past and the future seem to disappear. They are replaced by a fragmented present, filled with the unknown and radically different from ‘normal’ life. Referring to the form of the iconostasis, Kononova creates a collaged image of reality, using the symbols of the present: photographs taken before the war or those not directly related to it, yet emerging during its course. Each scene unfolds and flows into another, scaling into new, alternative landscapes.
However, even this architectural structure — intended to give the collage coherence — appears suspended in emptiness. Its center constantly slips away. It gathers only to disintegrate again — eternally forming, decomposing, and exploding in an attempt to reconcile the shifting, unstable center of the entire composition.Through this practice of working with images, the artist creates a picture of a complex reality, where the landscape is not just a static archive, but a moving and vulnerable structure.