VARVARA UHLIK
PLAY GROUND
SWAN
SUNSHINE, HOW ARE YOU?
SLAV GAZE
DIGITAL (AFTER)
COMMISSIONS AND NOT
about
Varvara Uhlik (b. 1997, Dnipro, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian visual artist based in London. She holds an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, where she was awarded the Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize and the Clare Winsten Memorial Award. Prior to that, she studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
Rooted in her personal history and the landscapes of her upbringing in Eastern Ukraine, her work explores the inherited complexities of post-Soviet identity. Through photography, video, sculpture, and installation, Varvara navigates themes of generational trauma, cultural memory, and the enduring shadow of Russian imperialism on both individual lives and the wider socio-political fabric of Eastern Europe.
Central to her practice is the act of digital archiving — a means of piecing together fractured memories and inaccessible geographies. Since the 2014 occupation of Crimea, and more acutely during the ongoing full-scale war, Varvara’s connection to formative places and people has been mediated through fading family albums, online fragments, and pixelated remnants. Her photographs confront the tension between the permanence of digital records and the physical absence they represent, inviting a nuanced reflection on belonging, loss, and the slipperiness of memory — particularly in an age when even memory can be fabricated by AI, blurring the boundaries between truth and fabrication.
In her photographic work, she reworks personal family archives alongside newly constructed scenes, to create visual narratives that move between the imagined and the remembered. In her video and installation practice, she incorporates found imagery, online sources, and mapping tools such as Google Maps to further examine themes of displacement, reconstruction, and the digital mediation of memory. Across media, scenes of folkloric domesticity, intimate rituals, and imagined returns create spaces where rupture and repair coexist, and personal and collective histories intertwine.
In 2024, she was selected as one of the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch. That same year she was shortlisted for the PhMuseum Photography Grant. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Photo Élysée Museum (2025), Milan Photo Fair (2024, 2025), Encontros da Imagem (2024), and Liquida Photofestival (2025), and was featured in publications such as The Guardian, BJP, Photoworks, Riga Photography Biennial 2025, Der Greif, Paris Photo, and LensCulture among others.
cv
Born in 1997 in Dnipro, Ukraine
Based in London, UK
EDUCATION
2023-2025 MA Fine Art: Media, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, UK (Distinction)
2019-2023 BA Photography, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, Netherlands
2016-2019 BA Arts and Media Management, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025
Sunshine, How Are You?, Liquida Photofestival, Polo del '900, Turin, Italy
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026
FOCUS, Artphilein Foundation, Lugano, Switzerland
2025
reGeneration Z, Photo Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Rebirth, Spilka Paris & Honchar Museum, Galerie Cinema, Paris, France
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
PRESS, FEATURES
2025
Vanity Fair Italia: What Echoes Remain
The Guardian
La Stampa
Riga Photography Biennial 2025
ArtFrame Magazine
2024
Canal180 Interview: Memory and idenity in the shadow of history. 180 Meets
Der Greif: Artist Feature and BlogYogurt Magazine, Italy De Standaard, Daily Newspaper, Belgium British Journal of Photography, ‘Ones To Watch 2024’ Issue, London, UK
Paris Photo, Carte Blanche
2023
Photography+, Photoworks, Issue #20, Graduate Issue 2023, Brighton, UK
Paris Photo, Carte Blanche
British Journal of Photography, Carte Blanche Article
PHMuseum, Women Photographers Grant
See-Zeen, Magazine for Contemporary Photography, Issue #10, Fall
Artdoc Photography Magazine, Enigma of Life
AWARDS & GRANTS
2025
Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize
The Clare Winsten Memorial Award
Sarabande: The Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation Emerging Artist Award 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
2022
Erasmus Mundus Scholarship
De Schuurman Schimmel – van Outeren Stichting Grant
Gertrude & AucArt