Lyoh
Varvara Uhlik
Nominated by
PhotoIreland
My grandmother’s root cellar was lined with shelves of jars filled with pickled fruits and vegetables - a common sight in (post)Soviet Ukraine, where scarcity made preservation a necessity. Drawing on this domestic ritual, the work reflects on the desire to preserve sustenance as well as sentiment. By sealing family photographs from holidays in Crimea and school days in Dnipro together with seasonal vegetables, the piece transforms a familiar act of preservation into a metaphor for memory itself. The jars become vessels of nostalgia and impermanence, embodying the desire to preserve and to savour what will be gone.
Lyoh is the Ukrainian word for Root Cellar.
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The Artist
Varvara Uhlik
Nominated in
By
PhotoIreland
Lives and Works in
London, UK
Varvara Uhlik (b.1997, Ukraine) is a London-based visual artist who explores themes of Slavic culture and identity, with a focus on the post-Soviet era’s impact on her generation.
Working across photography, installation, and video, Varvara often reworks archival materials, bringing them into dialogue with contemporary narratives and newly produced work. Through this process, she examines the tension between past and present, reality and its digital afterlife, foregrounding the impermanence of our surroundings and the fragility of memory.
In 2024, the British Journal of Photography recognised Varvara as a Ones to Watch artist. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Sunday Painter, London; Photo Élysée Museum, Switzerland; European Photography Month, Tokyo; MIA Milan Photo Fair, Italy; Encontros da Imagem, Portugal; and Liquida Photofestival, Italy. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, Beaux Arts Magazine, Photoworks, Riga Photography Biennial 2025, Der Greif, and LensCulture, among others.
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