Maria Plotnikova (Kyiv, Ukraine) and Yuliia Kolesnyk (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Maria Plotnikova is a Ukrainian artist working in performance, video and painting. She has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2019 and has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also works as an independent Art Director and Graphic Designer. Through her collaborative performances Maria’s artistic practice confronts us with the (im)possibility of being together and the unavoidable feeling of both strangeness and empathy.

Yuliia Kolesnyk is a marketing professional with 13+ years of experience in advertising, communications, and branding. Was awarded a Chevening scholarship in 2019. Before the full scale war of Russia against Ukraine, used to work as a brand strategy director at McCann Kyiv and a lecturer and curator at Projector Institute.

Zoya Laktionova (Mariupol, Ukraine)

Zoya Laktionova was born in Mariupol, in a working class family in 1984. Zoya first appeared in the world of documentary cinema as a character in the film Ma (2017). A year later made her first short documentary Diorama. The film, awarded in the “86” festival in Ukraine (2018), has been selected to be part of numerous European documentary film festivals. In 2021, Zoya premiered her new short Territory of Empty Windows at DocudaysUA International Human Rights DFF. Before the start of a full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine Zoya lived in Kyiv and worked as an independent artist and documentary filmmaker. By means of visual poetry and personal stories her films reflect upon displacement, belonging, war and memory.

Anastasiya Plotnikova (Mariupol, Ukraine) and her partner Sonia Dobaj (Slovakia)

Anastasiya Plotnikova is an Ukrainian cinematographer. Starting as a photojournalist, she worked on exploring technical and dramatic ways of telling stories through moving images. Her two main areas of specialization are art documentation and filming choreography. Anastasiya balances between video reportage and classical cinematography to build it the way so the result represents the art piece’s true expression.

Sonia Dobaj is an interdisciplinary artist, born in Slovakia 1988. She graduated from Oxford Brookes University in 2016 with a BA degree in Fine Art and an MA degree in Contemporary Arts. Leaving her home country at the age of 18, she is in a habitual expat mindset exploring different countries and cultures. In 2017, she worked as a sculptor for Barrandov Film Studios a.s.,Prague, Czech Republic. In 2019, she became an art educator and curriculum developer in Ningbo, China. Sonia's art practice is capturing the dialog between the scientific and instinctive, based in installation art, video art, sculpture and painting. Her work reflects on environmental global changes that occur in our biological and anatomical structures /our bodies/ and the environment we live in.