Maryna Semenkova (b. 1983) is a socially-engaged multimedia artist and researcher from Odesa, Ukraine. The main directions of her art practice are self-identification in the urban environment, eco feminism and collective memory, collective unconscious.  

Media used - photography and performance. A distinctive feature of her work is collage technique.

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Maryna, like a surgeon, cuts reality into fragments, including not excluding herself. She seems to offer the viewer to disassemble reality into separate parts and reassemble it at their own discretion.

 

Professionally trained as a lawyer, she has been practicing meditation and psychotherapy since 2008. The basis for her work is her own reflection and psychotherapy. Maryna believes that ecology begins in the minds of people: a conscious attitude towards oneself leads to ecological values and, accordingly, to the ecology of the environment.

Having traveled a lot, and lived in India for three years, Maryna learned the comfort of her own life as a woman, and observed how women live in other countries. She has explored the degree of freedom for women in social and family spheres and believes that in the post-Soviet space people are not sufficiently aware of what feminism is, they are hostile towards and wary of this “Western” word. She sees it as her mission to cover this topic and to draw attention to it.

 

On February 28, 2022 she left Ukraine due to the invasion by the Russian Federation. For now, she stays in France and engaged in reflection and rethinking of the experience that happened in connection with the war and is forced to become in exile.