Artist Research: Viktorsha Uliyanova

Uliyanova is a multidisciplinary artist who works across alternative photography, installation, video, and fibre art. Her practice explores impermanence, ideas of home, and cultural identity through the lens of memory, drawing from her upbringing, experiences of political repression, and immigrant identity.

Uliyanova describes memory as a fragile thread that holds together the tapestry of history and culture. Through her work, she investigates identity, collective memory, and intergenerational trauma that permeates both families and nations. Using textured multiples, video, and alternative photographic processes, she examines the blind spots within history and questions how the past continues to shape perceptions of the present and future.

My cyanotype work is inspired by Viktorsha Uliyanova due to her exploration of memory, family history and identity through archival photographs and alternative photographic processes. In a similar way to Uliyanova, I am using personal family images. I will be investigating how photographs preserve memories whilst also becoming fragile overtime. I didn’t want to leave the ‘memory line’ images as they were, I wanted to distort them from their original stature. The deep blue tones and unpredictable marks that are created through cyanotypes suggest an idea of nostalgia and absence. Uliyanova layered family images to create her cyanotypes and explore personal history and memory, which is what I plan on doing within my work.