Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament and Personal Experiences. 10 Minutes with Maryna Brodovska.

Maryna Brodovska is a Ukrainian visual artist and filmmaker born in Mykolaiv and based in Kyiv. Working across photography, digital collage, text, and documentary film, her practice examines memory, displacement, and the long-term consequences of war on both personal and collective identities. The artist has published two photobooks, including the self-published book My Dear Vira, which was shortlisted for the Aperture Photobook Awards, the Kassel Dummy Awards, and other competitions.

On July 29, the group photography exhibition Restart opened at Prospektas Gallery in Vilnius. The exhibition is the outcome of a biennial open call inviting photographers to present their work. It brings together projects that highlight the fragile relationship between reality, memory, and fiction, both on individual and collective levels. The exhibition intertwines historical, political, and personal narratives in which “truth” is constantly shifting, fragmenting, and being rewritten. Maryna is one of the artists participating in the exhibition, alongside nine others.

What aspect of your creative practice will visitors to the ReStart exhibition be able to explore?

I am presenting elements of my recent photographic project, The Big Deal. The project explores Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament and examines how political decisions shape both personal and collective memory. Through photography, archival materials, and photomontage, I investigate the gap between the promises of the past and the reality we live in today.

What are the main issues and themes that you feel are important to address through art? Have they changed over time?

I think the beauty of art is that any topic can be valuable. I believe that the creative process begins with the author’s inner urge to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

In the past, my practice focused on personal stories and reflections on identity. I made a very uplifting book about friendship, and, to be honest, I miss the time when I could focus on such intimate and small things. But the war has changed my life, and my art as well.

Today, my work explores themes of war trauma and displacement. Since 2022, I have been creating a series of photographs of the beds where I have slept since the beginning of the war. The series is about losing the feeling of having a safe place to return to after experiencing war and forced displacement. I feel that this project could continue for my entire life – or perhaps the feeling of safety will return one day, after the war ends, and the final image in the series will be made at home in Ukraine. The topic of nuclear disarmament, which I explore in The Big Deal, is also connected to the war, but it approaches it from a different perspective. Instead of focusing on personal experience, it looks at politics and history.

Looking back, what were the main impulses that led you to turn to photography and other creative fields?

I fell in love with photography when I was a child. I don’t really know where it came from – no one in my family was interested in photography, and we didn’t even have a camera at home. At first, I wanted to become a painter. But I had a terrible art teacher whose classes were so boring that I started to believe painting simply wasn’t for me. Photography was the complete opposite. With my little one-button camera, taking pictures felt easy and fun. That’s when I realised this was the medium that suited me. Later, when I was a student, I bought my first proper camera – a Nikon – and I’ve been making images ever since.

Over time, I became interested not only in taking photographs but also in transforming them. I love deconstructing and manipulating photographic images because it allows me to tell stories in ways that a single photograph sometimes can’t.

I also work as a filmmaker and screenwriter, and these different fields naturally intersect in my practice. When a new idea comes to me, it’s never immediately clear which medium will be the best way to tell the story. For example, my first photobook, My Dear Vira, tells the story of my friendship with Vira, who emigrated to the United States and later became a soldier in the U.S. Army. The book was published in 2020, but after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both of our lives changed dramatically. I realised that the story wasn’t over, so I decided to continue it as a feature-length documentary. I hope the film will be released in 2027.

The project on Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament, which I’m presenting at the ReStart exhibition, also feels like something that will continue to evolve. It’s such a vast subject that I don’t think it can be fully expressed in a single format. Alongside the exhibition, I’m also developing a photobook. The research has so many layers and different perspectives that it’s difficult to bring everything together within an exhibition space.

You have often used photo collages in your creative practice, and in one of your most recent series, you’ve also incorporated AI. Do you see it as just another tool for manipulating photographs? Have you set any rules or boundaries for yourself regarding the use of AI?

Yes, I use AI as a tool when I feel it’s the best way to express a particular idea.

For example, in my series 12 Eerie Tales About Love, I used vernacular photographs from my personal archive as a starting point. I asked AI to expand the images, guiding the process with prompts until they became visual scenes. What fascinated me was that almost every image turned out to be unsettling. Photographs that had originally been taken during the day were transformed into nighttime scenes, creating an atmosphere that felt dark and uncanny. It perfectly reflected how I experienced that relationship. In this particular project, I think AI was the right tool because it allowed me to visualise something that would have been very difficult to express through photography alone.

But I see it as a very limited tool. I would never let AI play a major role in my creative process because I believe that role belongs to the artist. For me, the most important part of making art is the process itself, and that’s something I genuinely enjoy.

How would you describe the Ukrainian photographers of your generation?

I would describe my generation as believers who didn’t give up. We learned to use the instability and challenges around us as fuel to keep creating.

What inspires you?

I am inspired by the ideas and feelings expressed by other creators. I experience incredible emotions when I encounter a beautiful idea that has been transformed into an artistic form – whether it’s visual art, film, or music.

Music, in particular, still feels absolutely magical to me. I cannot fully understand how sounds alone can, in a matter of seconds, make us feel nostalgic, happy, or sad, or suddenly bring back memories of a particular person or moment from our lives. It is amazing how something so abstract can connect so deeply with our emotions and memories.

What are your creative plans for the future?

I will continue working on The Big Deal project and looking for opportunities to present it in its full form, including the photobook. I will also continue working on a documentary film with my co-director, Olga Chernykh, and hope that we can bring the film to completion.