Lifelines

An ongoing project.

Lifelines is a project that traces my family’s migrations, including my own, raising questions of belonging, lineage, governments’ attempts to pin us down with documents and stamps, and imperialistic absorption.

Although my paternal grandmother and my mother were born on territories now framed as russian, they are not of russia. My grandmother, who was born in Domno-Klyuchi village near Chita in the Transbaikal region, carried Mongolian heritage. Those lands were inhabited by Mongolic peoples before the violent russian conquest of Siberia. My mother is from Starodub, a city in Bryansk region. That area has a long history as Ukrainian land, specifically part of the Ukrainian Cossack state and later the Ukrainian State.

I have been living outside of Ukraine for over a decade now, currently residing in Portugal, where my parents joined me when they fled the Russian war in Ukraine after it started in 2022.

Those who keep moving, migrating, adapting, remain beyond the reach of powers that seek to immobilize, classify, and possess. Empires do not only conquer land – they seek to arrest motion, to turn people into records, documents, entries, proof of their own narratives. Lifelines responds to this logic by showing how my family survived precisely through movement.

Visually, the work unfolds through double exposures. The first set shows photographs of my ancestors overlapped with maps of the locations where they were born, published around their birth year. Another set shows my IDs – passports, residence permits, and even a USSR-issued (and thus obsolete) birth certificate – overlapped with photos of me taken around the time each document was issued. These double exposures reveal the ambiguity of documents and maps: behind stamps and lines, there are real people’s stories.

Lifelines is about histories that continue moving despite attempts to pin them down. Each generation adds another line on the map – after all, movement is life.

My paternal great-great-grandmother and the map of the Chita region in 1865
My paternal great-great-grandmother and the map of the Chita region in 1865
My paternal great-grandparents and the map of the Chita region in 1914
My paternal great-grandparents and the map of the Chita region in 1914
My maternal grandfather and the map of the Bryansk region in 1909
My maternal grandfather and the map of the Bryansk region in 1909
My paternal grandmother and the map of the Chita region in 1930
My paternal grandmother and the map of the Chita region in 1930
My paternal grandfather and the map of the Dnipro region in 1939
My paternal grandfather and the map of the Dnipro region in 1939
My mother and the map of the Bryansk region in 1954
My mother and the map of the Bryansk region in 1954
My father and the map of the Dnipro region in 1954
My father and the map of the Dnipro region in 1954
My grandmother Ulyana and my mother Liudmyla. My mother Liudmyla and myself. Myself and my grandmother Ulyana. Matrilineality traced through generations.
My grandmother Ulyana and my mother Liudmyla. My mother Liudmyla and myself. Myself and my grandmother Ulyana. Matrilineality traced through generations.
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2022
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2022
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2020
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2020
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2019
My Portuguese residency and myself in 2019
My Estonian residency and myself in 2017
My Estonian residency and myself in 2017
My Portuguese driving license and myself in 2020
My Portuguese driving license and myself in 2020
My Ukrainian passport and myself in 2023
My Ukrainian passport and myself in 2023
My Ukrainian passport and myself in 2006
My Ukrainian passport and myself in 2006
My soviet birth certificate and myself in 1992
My soviet birth certificate and myself in 1992
This embroidered data visualization maps five cities where I have lived across five geographic dimensions using the parallel coordinates technique. Each city is represented by a continuous thread connecting data points across vertical axes. The vertical axes (left to right): latitude, longitude, population, distance from Lisbon, elevation. The cities (top to bottom): Tallinn, Estonia; London, UK; Dnipro, Ukraine; Porto, Portugal; Lisbon, Portugal. The embroidery overlays the palm of my hand, the stitched lines resembling lifelines.
This embroidered data visualization maps five cities where I have lived across five geographic dimensions using the parallel coordinates technique. Each city is represented by a continuous thread connecting data points across vertical axes. The vertical axes (left to right): latitude, longitude, population, distance from Lisbon, elevation. The cities (top to bottom): Tallinn, Estonia; London, UK; Dnipro, Ukraine; Porto, Portugal; Lisbon, Portugal. The embroidery overlays the palm of my hand, the stitched lines resembling lifelines.
This diptych pairs two maps: on the left, the historical Russian expansion into Siberia and the takeover of the Transbaikalia region; on the right, Ukraine’s assessment of Russian operational objectives projected for the end of 2026. Across both maps, I embroidered the phrase “get out of my land” in Morse code, underscoring how Russian expansion - past and present - has threatened my family across generations and continues to endanger Ukrainian territory today.
This diptych pairs two maps: on the left, the historical Russian expansion into Siberia and the takeover of the Transbaikalia region; on the right, Ukraine’s assessment of Russian operational objectives projected for the end of 2026. Across both maps, I embroidered the phrase “get out of my land” in Morse code, underscoring how Russian expansion - past and present - has threatened my family across generations and continues to endanger Ukrainian territory today.
A stamp of Ukrainian Hetmanate over a map when Starodub was still a part of Ukraine. Starodub is historically a Ukrainian land. For centuries it belonged to the Chernihiv Principality of Kyivan Rus’, placing it firmly within the early Ukrainian cultural and political sphere. After the Mongol era, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which preserved the Ruthenian (proto-Ukrainian) language, laws, and traditions in the region. In the 17th century, Starodub was incorporated into the Cossack Hetmanate as the Starodub Regiment, one of the administrative centers of Ukrainian Cossack governance. Its population, institutions, and religious life at that time were unmistakably Ukrainian. Only later, in the 18th century, was Starodub absorbed by the Russian Empire, which imposed Russification and retroactively rebranded it as “historically Russian.” But its foundational history - Kyivan Rus’, Lithuanian-Ruthenian rule, and the Hetmanate - makes clear that its roots are Ukrainian, not Russian.
A stamp of Ukrainian Hetmanate over a map when Starodub was still a part of Ukraine. Starodub is historically a Ukrainian land. For centuries it belonged to the Chernihiv Principality of Kyivan Rus’, placing it firmly within the early Ukrainian cultural and political sphere. After the Mongol era, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which preserved the Ruthenian (proto-Ukrainian) language, laws, and traditions in the region. In the 17th century, Starodub was incorporated into the Cossack Hetmanate as the Starodub Regiment, one of the administrative centers of Ukrainian Cossack governance. Its population, institutions, and religious life at that time were unmistakably Ukrainian. Only later, in the 18th century, was Starodub absorbed by the Russian Empire, which imposed Russification and retroactively rebranded it as “historically Russian.” But its foundational history - Kyivan Rus’, Lithuanian-Ruthenian rule, and the Hetmanate - makes clear that its roots are Ukrainian, not Russian.