Bizarre Normality Lviv, Ukraine, 2023 - 2025. Vova, Marta, Dima, Solomiya and Sofiia go about their normal jobs. Everyone has a lot to do, Lviv exudes normality. The city's cafes and restaurants are bursting at the seams, the trams squeak with overcrowding through the old town. If there weren't also the other side: the almost daily air raid sirens, often at night. The people of Lviv try to lead a normal life, a bit of normality is so important, especially in times of war.
Vova Keno, 38, painter - Lviv, January 2025
Life seems completely normal and yet everything is different.
Vova (38) is a famous painter. Rooted in graffiti and street art, he is today represented by international art galleries. His artistic approach is centered around exploration and discovery, with no fixed themes or narratives that limit his creativity. He says "Bizarre normality is scrolling through your Instagram feed, where posts of torn bodies and bombed-out cities are seamlessly followed by images of tanned bodies and graffiti-covered walls."
Marta Buriak, 28, interior designer - Lviv, April 2024
Is it right to live normally in Lviv in these times? Shouldn't one go to Europe, like many others have done? Is there a moral obligation to stay? Marta (28) has founded her own interior design agency ."I know a lot of people who have gone abroad, everyone has to decide for themselves. But I'm staying. The most important thing is to be where my friends are. That's what life is about, isn't it?" she asks, both me and herself.
Dima Maikut, 23, illustrator, Lviv, April 2024
For the young men it is even more dramatic, they are faced with the anxious question of whether and when they will be drafted to the military service. Dima (23) is an illustrator. He currently works as a master of ceremonies in a trendy tea shop in Lviv. In his free time he carves wooden figures.
Solomiya Kyrylova, 32, theatre and film actress - Lviv, November 2024
Solomiya (32) is a well known Ukrainian theater and movie actress, the protagonist in the popular movie "Pamfir" (Ukraine, 2022). She continues to perform on stage in Kyiv, Lviv and other Ukrainian cities, managing a complex daily family life, including her young child.
Sofiia Maksymovych, 23, painter and photographer - April 2024
Behind the famous Lviv Opera House there is a worn but very creative studio in which a group of young artists work together. Sofiia (23) is a painter and photographer who works in the studio. Transgenerational memories. The memories of the ancestors leave imprints on the bodies of the descendants, a 'corporeality of memories', as she describes it. Margarita, another artist associated with the studio, only has one drawing still hanging in the window. She has exchanged her everyday painting life in the studio for a job as a paramedic on the eastern border of Ukraine. Margarita is a very strong woman, says Sofiia proudly, but also thoughtfully.
Going, staying, dreaming, painting, helping - it is this horror of being torn apart, these many unanswered questions that cannot be answered in the city that is so far from the front. It is this terrible ambivalence that defines Lviv's current reality. And almost every day someone comes back to be buried in one of Lviv's wonderful cemeteries.
