I am Ukrainian and I love my country yet I always had a clear sense that I belonged somewhere else. Almost 7 years ago I found what I was looking for in the UK and it has been my chosen home ever since.

A certain connection or even bond with Kiev, the city where I was born however remains. Perhaps it's a reflection of a deep understanding of its inner life, something I will probably never achieve in the UK as I missed out on a huge number of cultural layers while growing up in Kiev. Equally the past 7 years brought dramatic political and social changes to Ukraine and it's becoming less and less of the country I left. However I feel I am still in a very privileged position that allows me to look from a distance at something I know so well from within.

Initially when revisiting Kiev through The City of Home series I was not looking for a clear definition of the place and the people but turned inwards, establishing the poetics as my reaction against the shallowness of its new commodity culture, while equally looking to express a sense of belonging and care. Gradually this process made me realise that I am looking for something else, a deeper meaning, a way of grasping, experiencing and expressing a wider intuitive perception or concept: simply put that the world as we know it cannot possibly be it. Through photographic means I am looking for visual exit points to other possibilities, another dimension, another world.

Kiev is the place I know and sense and it helps me create a consumerism- and cultural cliché-free photographic space, where the location and period are not easy to define.