VARVARA UHLIK

SCULPTURE & INSTALLATION:

PLAY GROUND II
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LYOH
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PLAY GROUND
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SWAN
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DIGITAL (AFTER)
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PLAYLAND
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PHOTOGRAPHY:

SUNSHINE, HOW ARE YOU?
^(2023-2024)
SLAV GAZE
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about

Varvara Uhlik (b. 1997, Dnipro) is a Ukrainian visual artist based in London, working across photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Rooted in her personal history and the landscapes of eastern Ukraine where she grew up, her work traces the inherited complexities of post-Soviet identity: generational trauma, cultural memory, and the long shadow Russian imperialism casts over individual lives and the wider fabric of Eastern Europe.

At the centre of her practice is a question about how history and ideology become material. Political power inscribes itself into objects, architectures, and public spaces, and Varvara is drawn to how those inscriptions are lived with, absorbed into the body, and passed down long after the regime that made them has gone. Her materials carry that history directly: Soviet-era objects, industrial remnants, and found imagery, chosen for their relationship to the time and place she is researching.

Since the 2014 occupation of Crimea, and more acutely through the full-scale war, her connection to formative people and places has been mediated by fading family albums, online fragments, and pixelated remnants. Her photographs hold the tension between the permanence of the digital record and the physical absence it stands in for, opening a reflection on belonging, loss, and the slipperiness of memory in an age when memory itself can be fabricated and the line between truth and invention no longer holds.

In her sculpture and installation, these questions take physical form. Reconstructing the ideological architecture of Soviet and post-Soviet life, and the industrial infrastructures that shaped imagination through uniformity and control, she gives Ukrainian history and identity weight and spatial presence, making the effects of Russian imperialism not only visible but materially felt.

In 2026 Varvara was named a Foam Talent Runner-up by Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam and nominated as a FUTURES Photography Talent by PhotoIreland. The year before she was selected for New Contemporaries, in a cohort The Telegraph described as the artists shaping the future of British art, and in 2024 she was named one of the British Journal of Photography's Ones to Watch. She has been a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors since 2025, having received its Gilbert Bayes Award.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at South London Gallery (2026); The Sunday Painter, London (2025); Artphilein Foundation, Switzerland (2026); Palmer Gallery, London (2025); Photo Élysée Museum, Switzerland (2025); European Photography Month in Tokyo, Japan (2025); and MIA Milan Photo Fair (2024, 2025). It has featured in publications including The Guardian, Beaux Arts Magazine, Foam Magazine, Wallpaper, Vanity Fair Italia, and the Riga Photography Biennial 2025, among others.

cv

Born 1997 in Dnipro, Ukraine
Based in London, UK

EDUCATION
2023-2025 MFA Fine Art: Media, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, UK (Distinction)
2019-2023 BA Design: Photography, Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, Netherlands
2016-2019 BA: Arts and Media Management, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026
(Upcoming) Huxley-Parlour Gallery, London, UK
Basel Social Club, Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland
Sunshine, How Are You?, Fotofestival, Lenzburg Castle, Lenzburg, Switzerland
Sunshine, How Are You?, Artphilein Foundation, Lugano, Switzerland

2025
Lyoh, The Door, Palmer Gallery, London, UK
Sunshine, How Are You?, Liquida Photofestival, Polo del '900, Turin, Italy

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
New Contemporaries 2026, MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), Middlesbrough, UK
Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum, Pireos 138, Athens, Greece
Gen Z. Shaping a New Gaze, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (FFF), Frankfurt, Germany
New Contemporaries 2026, South London Gallery, London, UK

2025
The Flesh of Space, The Sunday Painter, London, UK
Gen Z. Shaping a New Gaze, Photo Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
SEEEU, European Photography Month in Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
MIA Photo Fair Milano, Irinox Award, Milan, Italy

2024
Encontros da Imagem, International Photography and Visual Arts Festival, Braga, Portugal
Der Greif: Arles Edition, Rencontres d'Arles, portfolio screening, ParisBerlin Fotohaus, Arles, France
MIA Photo Fair Milano, ‘Welcome To My Unknown’ exhibition, Milan, Italy

2023
REGENERATE: Noorderlicht International Photo Festival, Groningen, Netherlands
Public Space Exhibition 2023, Altona, Hamburg, Germany
Free Range, AOP Student Awards, Truman Brewery, London, UK

SELECTED PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

2026
Foam Magazine #68: Talent Issue
Art Monthly #495, April 2026, New Contemporaries Review by Adam Heardman
The Telegraph, ‘I’ve just seen the future of British art’ by Alastair Sooke
Wallpaper, ‘Who are the emerging artists to know in the UK now?’ by Hannah Silver

2025
Beaux Arts Magazine, Issue n°498, Paris, France
Gen Z, Un Nouveau Regard, Éditions Textuel, co-edition with Photo Élysée
Der Greif: Issue 18, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas
The Riga Photography Biennial, NEXT 2025 Publication
The Guardian, SEEEU Article
Japan Times
Lula Japan
Vanity Fair Italia: What Echoes Remain
The Guardian, LensCulture Article
La Stampa
ArtFrame Magazine

2024
British Journal of Photography, ‘Ones To Watch 2024’ Issue, Text by Ravi Gosh, London, UK
Der Greif: Artist Feature and BlogYogurt Magazine, Italy De Standaard, Daily Newspaper, Belgium
2023
Photography+, Photoworks, Issue #20, Graduate Issue 2023, Brighton, UK
British Journal of Photography, Paris Photo: Carte Blanche, Article

AWARDS & GRANTS
2026
Foam Talent 2026, Runner-up, Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
FUTURES Photography | Nominated by PhotoIreland
Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (shortlist)

2025
New Contemporaries 2025-2026
Gilbert Bayes Award, Royal Society of Sculptors
Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize, The Kenneth Armitage Foundation
Clare Winsten Memorial Award, UCL
Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation Emerging Artist Grant LensCulture New Visions Award (finalist)

2024
PARIS PHOTO (finalist), Carte Blanche
Belfast Photo Festival (shortlist), awarded “Highly Commended”
Athens Photo Festival (shortlist)
PhMuseum Photography Grant (shortlist)

2023
PARIS PHOTO (finalist), Carte Blanche

TALKS & WORKSHOPS
2026
Interview, Meet the artist, South London Gallery, London, UK
Interview, Personal Notes, gowithYamo, London, UK

2025
Press Conference, SEEEU, WPÜ SHINJUKU, Tokyo, Japan
Workshop, Imaginary Spaces: Storytelling Through Photography, Art Block, South London Gallery, London, UK
Workshop, Bookbinding Basics, Art Block, South London Gallery, London, UK
Workshop, Image Collage: Making New Meanings, Art Block, South London Gallery, London, UK
Workshop, CTRL +C, CTRL V, Cell Project Space x Blackhorse Activators, London, UK
Workshop, The Looms, Cell Project Space x Blackhorse Activators, London, UK
2024
Interview, Canal180: Memory and identity in the shadow of history. 180 Meets, Braga, Portugal

LIMITED EDITIONS AVAILABLE
Gertrude | AucArt

EMAIL: VARVARA.VU@GMAIL.COM

INSTAGRAM: @VARAVARKA