THE INNER CROSSROADS

Zavadski studio, Vienna, Ausrtia. 2026

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The inner crossroads is a solo exhibition of Yaroslava Khomenko at interdisciplinary space Zavadski in Vienna. In her new body of works she builds the conversation about memory, landscapes, archives, and the personal amid nomadic turbulence. 

 

The exhibition opens with a sculptural figure: a human-like figure in a black dress made from 50 recycled T-shirts, with a lamp instead of a head. This deliberately theatrical image is an important epilogue to the exhibition — an ode to the artist's pre-war life with its subjectively pompous self-presentation, but, as it turned out, a misunderstanding of herself. And here we move on to an organic continuation — a monumental self-portrait of a naked Yaroslava who has left her dress behind. It is composed of images of random human bodies — an internal struggle between the desire to bare oneself and the desire not to reveal oneself to the public. It is an act of internal deconstruction, catharsis of the body and self-perception. When the external protective structure ceases to function and the foundations for a new one have not yet been laid, who are we at that moment?

 

The Crossroad is a series based on Iphone’s photos from the personal artist’s archive. Compressed images depict places where she has stayed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The composition of landscapes is united by a continuous horizon - fragmented memories of places that flow into one another like a journey in a dream, acquiring phantasmagorical outlines - after losing the emotional connection to your home, all other places look unfamiliar in the same way. Considering her painful codependency with Kyiv, the loss of a sense of home manifests itself in the artist in the form of piercing pain, especially when the physical place still exists, but the emotional connection to it has disappeared. This series captures the moment of accepting a state of dissociation and being at a crossroads of uncertainty.

The Inner Crossroads functions as a poetic journey through time and space over the last four years of the artist's life and is her first public personal confession. The goal of this journey is not to return to pre-war stability or to search for an alternative grounding, but to fully accept instability as a new reality.