I Can’t Say Much emerged from my project Unseen Mundane when the first invasion of Kyiv was occurring in 2022. Watching the Russian military moving into the city prompted me to begin collecting security camera footage from around the country.

Photographic emulsion lift on porcelain tile, cement

One day I captured an image of a man packing up to leave. He never came back. It is unknown to me if the camera, or the building it was in, is still there.

I transferred the photo onto porcelain tiles mounted in cement using an emulsion lift method. Stretching and warping the emulsion while transferring them to tile caused cracks and holes to open, and the edges became rough

While working on this project I felt it needed something more. Katya Chomitzky, a friend of mine, had assisted in evacuations from Ukraine and her amazing stories were a great inspiration to the piece.

This small apartment was the man’s home, a place of solace and comfort that was stolen from him. I decided to focus on food, as it is a universal cultural component. Katya was kind enough to share one of her grandmother’s hand-written recipes with me. The recipe was for cabbage dumplings, a common comfort food in Ukraine. I imagine it is something the man would have eaten in this apartment.