“Who am I?” is a pop-up exhibition that took place on November 9 in London’s Hackney Wick. It was both a showcase and an event, featuring works by various artists and a total installation. A similar paradoxical encounter unfolds on a conceptual level: the artist turns inward, and at the same time, discovers themselves within a collective. How the curators managed to create a space where archaic meanings intertwine — in an article by Viktoria Miroshnichenko.
Kristina Baeva – Self-portrait
Over the past decades, the dominant method of artistic practice has been research — into environmental issues, gender topics, political and social questions. But today’s turbulent times demand new approaches, perhaps ones that focus more intently on the inner world of the individual. A New Renaissance shifts the gaze from the age-old philosophical question of “man and the world” toward the pursuit of self-knowledge. These “well-forgotten old” questions now call for new methodologies.
Artists are no longer turning to the cradle of European culture — Ancient Greece and its early definitions of art — nor are they relying on Aristotelian logic, which is rapidly falling out of favor. Instead, they turn toward the mindset of even more ancient ancestors; to a world untouched by rational disenchantment, untamed by language. The proof lies in cutting-edge group exhibitions that place uncompromising self-attunement at their core.
This was the methodological framework set by the curators of the international exhibition “Who am I?”, where the i can be read as an exclamation mark, emphasizing the boldness of being oneself. At the same time, its inversion hints at an inward turn — a call to self-reflection. This theme is especially relevant for nonconformists and émigrés, who are in the process of reprogramming their identities. It is precisely these kinds of artists who shaped the overall layout of the exhibition — the curators brought together participants from Istanbul, Russia and London, offering them the space for deeply personal expression.
How does this personal phenomenology manifest on canvas? First and foremost, through unapologetic art-selfies and the choice of figurative painting. It’s worth examining the most emblematic works — or rather, the artists and their images — that together form a kaleidoscopic portrait of the contemporary generation.
In this project, the exhibition was just one part of the experience. The space was conceived as a creative gathering — a format in which artistic expression is complemented by bodily, verbal, culinary, and musical practices. “Who am I?”became an opportunity to spend several days within a shared ritual, where artist and viewer exist not in the usual opposition, but within the same system of coordinates.
The project’s curators — Inessa Garder and Darico Hasaya — have long explored the idea of art as a space for healing. Darico curated the widely discussed international exhibition “EV” (from Turkish — “Home”) in Istanbul, along with other healing art-experience shows in Turkey, the UK, and Peru. Inessa is an artist who spent two and a half years in India, where she painted, meditated with monks on the banks of the Ganges, and later co-organized the Sant Sewa art festival. Their joint curatorial gesture in “Who am I?” was to create a space where young artists meet experienced ones — to live, reflect, and quite literally heal together through art.
Curators of Who Am I? Show: Darico Hasaya and Inessa Garder
An artistic happening in the heart of London: performance as a way of life.
One of the most striking offline participants was Natasha Antipova-Kaploukhaya, an artist and performer whose work took the form of a mirrored installation accompanied by instructions for use. It was less an object and more an intimate act of interaction: the viewer was left alone with themselves — reflected, yet unrecognized.
Etched onto the mirror were the words:
Instructions for use
Only you know who you are
It is your reflection, but not you
Leave some of your shadow self here
Be happy and be free after
Beside the mirror lay eyeliner and lip pencils. The viewer was invited to write something of their own, to leave behind a piece of their “shadow self.” The inscriptions already present, like voices from other participants, set a raw emotional tone:
I overeat at night
I don’t love my mother
I’m afraid I’ll never be happy
I’m in love with my best friend’s girlfriend
This sheet of confessions expanded with every new gesture, transforming the artwork into a collective act of confession.
No less poignant was the self-portrait by Alisa Benagueva, a St. Petersburg–born artist now living and working in Istanbul. Her practice spans decorative installations, art photography, and scenography — but in this work, it was the sense of radical sincerity that stood out. A portrait crowned with a wreath, radiating golden rays and streaked with tears, appeared as if scorched into being by prayer. Created during a period of deep emotional crisis, Alisa admits she spent days praying and crying, and chose to document this experience in order to survive and transcend it.
Alisa Benagueva, self-portrait
The work echoed both Catholic iconography and an intimate rite of personal salvation. It wasn’t merely an image — it was an act of pain made visible.
At the organizational level, the curators deliberately rejected the traditional white cube format. The space was styled with everyday objects — an old piano, soft furniture, fabrics — evoking a lived-in room where one could not only look, but be. In the lead-up to the opening, the artists gathered — not for installation, but to cook dinner together for the guests. This gesture was not institutional, but human: dinner as a form of art, care as a strategy of resistance.
Later in the evening, an informal concert took place, featuring both émigrés living in London and British artists. One of them, Olivia Pinkney, also presented a painting. This kind of format fluidity was a defining feature of “Who am I?”: within a single day, an artist could be a painter, a musician, and a kitchen chef. In this, the idea of a holistic “self” is manifested — multilayered, fluid, and indivisible into roles.
A particularly special moment came during a meditation session led by Roger Teasdale, a British mindfulness teacher, who guided participants in a practice aimed at reconnecting with their “true self.” For many, this experience was as impactful as the art itself. In “Who am I?”, art and the practice of living are interwoven — without hierarchy.
Art Beyond Coordinates: Reflections from a Distance
In addition to the exhibition’s physical space, the curators also envisioned the possibility of remote participation. Artists residing in other countries — yet undergoing similar processes of self-exploration and introspection — joined the project online. Their contributions were no less personal or precise, despite the lack of shared air. Among them were Darina Keselman, Yuri Kurgansky, Evgenia Vinogradova, Vadim Dashkovsky, and Artemiy Repin.
Yuri Kurgansky, self-portrait
Unlike the previous works, Yuri Kurgansky’s selfie contains more anxiety and flickering tension. Yet here too, there are more questions than answers. We see an indifferent face surrounded by bouncy balls, each containing an icon inside. They resemble the popular — and largely meaningless — children’s toy: the rubber superball. These translucent balls are filled with symbols a programmer might use to annotate human existence: money, communication, home, leisure, music, time, food — alongside icons of brands and social media.
At first glance, one might settle for a straightforward anti-capitalist critique of consumption. But the “cold roe of being” remains indifferent to the protagonist — and this shifts the focus from society to the individual. Is he drowning in this chaos, or delighting in it? It’s unlikely the bouncy balls pose any threat. Perhaps he’s the one who chose this situation? And does he enjoy it? We’ll never know — the gaze turned toward us is as cold as the “plastic world” around him. This stare invites a question in return: Are we also playing with these little balls? Do we use them, or do they use us?
Despite their simplicity, such questions are worth revisiting time and again.
Moving to the next artist, it’s worth highlighting the unusual selection of contributors — the curators created a spontaneous situation, full of intersecting lines. It evokes egalitarian art projects that challenge institutional structures, question the authority of “expertise,” and resist the very idea of professionalism. This approach is mirrored in the exhibition’s design — with its modest household furniture, piano, and decorative knickknacks.
Isn’t this what an apartment looks like — and thus, a reflection of the “self” — for many of us? Compared to this, the white cube and its polished, linear concepts resemble magazine interiors: spaces where life is merely implied. From this perspective, the white cube falls short against something so simple yet powerful — a welcoming, lived-in environment.
The works of Evgenia Vinogradova could easily find their place in a feminist zine — the spirit of the times here is captured through the now-prevalent image of the bimbo. Her portraits reference the medieval memento mori motif — the juxtaposition of youthful freshness with symbols of death. The dynamism and rhythm of the photos echo visual directions once set by Juergen Teller. Notably, the reference to fashion photography also serves to build an egalitarian — and therefore mentally liberating — space.
Evgenia Vinogradova, Wreath
The artificial flowers are not merely part of a cemetery-like setting, but also a chromatic rhyme with the girl’s image. This creates a symbolic arc between youth and death. Much like the skull in old master paintings, the flowers underscore the inevitability of the journey from birth to death. But that’s not all. Kitsch runs through several registers of the work. The overly delicate flowers seem to question the very image of the girl. From here, the associations branch in different directions. Through a feminist lens, the fragile flower on a strong stem becomes an allusion to inner strength. In the context of mass media, one recalls the archetype of a monster cloaked in the form of a child.
This performative persona brings to mind another classic reference — the masks of commedia dell’arte. Once again, we encounter the artist’s mask, but this time, the cryptography of the “I” seems to want to be decoded — a coquettish Venetian disguise, awaiting its unmasking during carnival.
This methodology of constructing an artistic persona — through simplification and stripping away of conventions — recurs throughout many works in the project. The return to self happens through a kind of artistic and psychological archaeology. This process proves surprisingly productive, even within capitalist logic. From a philosophical perspective, it reaffirms the relevance of a phenomenological lens. Criticism of this direction can be dismissed just as easily as the tired argument that abstraction is superior to figurative painting. We are entering a moment when intellectual history returns to an old point — but along a new spiral. And it is image-based art that most swiftly reflects this shift.
In choosing the next artist, one might be tempted to continue with works that align in theme and method — for coherence and reinforcement of a thesis. But a different route may prove richer: creating a fuller picture of a contradictory exhibition. To that end, we turn to the self-portrait of Darina Keselman.
Darina Keselman, Self-portrait
To say that her minimalist composition — a golden silhouette carved into black — is a symbolic gesture of self-inquiry is only a starting point. Behind its graceful economy, another mask seems to shimmer. This image doesn’t demand attention through excess or overt narrative — instead, it invites quiet contemplation, offering space for the viewer’s own emotional projections. The associations shift: some may see the elegance of ancient bas-reliefs, others might interpret it as a digital glyph — a sleek contour suspended between presence and absence.
The choice of gold evokes both sacredness and surface, suggesting a self that is simultaneously divine and decorative — a polished relic of identity. The negative space surrounding the figure becomes just as charged as the form itself, asking what is withheld when we define ourselves by outline alone. There is something tender yet impenetrable in its silence — as though the profile is listening more than it is speaking.
This interplay between opulence and void, figure and absence, marks a potent duality — and further underscores the exhibition’s resistance to fixed, singular readings.
Vadim Dashkovsky, Space Poem
Vadim Dashkovsky also avoids the obvious route, presenting a static composition rich in textures and utterly devoid of cues. It is not abstract — yet its meaning is no less enigmatic. Hooking onto the title — Space Poem — one is reminded of a new wave of contemporary poets who seek fresh modes of self-representation. Egocentric patterns give way to a strict documentation of sensation — of space, color, and abstract ideas.
There’s another paradox here: by refusing to speak directly about the self, poetry often clears the way to the author’s unique vision. In that sense, could this still life tell us more about the artist than a portrait might? As with every piece in the exhibition, these portraits pose the question “Who am I?” — echoing through the mind of an attentive viewer.
A particularly notable video contribution to the online program came from Artemiy Repin — an artist and video maker working at the intersection of the bodily and the digital, reflection and disintegration. His video The Shape of Skin is not just an observation of the body, but an attempt to capture it as a phenomenon — elusive and ever-shifting. Here, skin is not a metaphor for vulnerability, but a subject in its own right, speaking in the language of light, flicker, and distortion.
The body fragments, vanishes, reassembles; the image sharpens, then fades, and in this fluctuation of density, a sensation arises — as though the very image is ashamed of its materiality, yet cannot do without it.
The work doesn’t address a specific viewer, but rather engages in dialogue with time itself — time as a force of decay and recoding. It’s a kind of visual breathing, without a beginning or end, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat beneath translucent skin. The image becomes rhythm, and rhythm becomes a form of self-knowledge.
Perhaps here, more than anywhere else, the question “Who am I?” is aimed not at the depicted subject, but at the image itself. What is its flesh? What is its truth? And does it even need to exist?
Conclusion: Collective Singing as a Form of Memory
In conclusion, it’s important to highlight the power of collective expression — the shared journey of self-discovery becomes a return to the revelations of our ancestors. The theory of “battle trance,” proposed by Joseph Jordania, suggests that synchronized singing, used to intimidate predators during hunts, was key to early human dominance. Over time, this practice became sacred — giving rise to choral praise of the divine and other forms of ritual coordination.
It seems more than plausible to trace modern curatorial concepts back to these distant origins. Large-scale gatherings offer a unique chance to discover the self through the Other — and to reach a new level of intercultural dialogue. In an age marked by escalating warfare and the ongoing fight against xenophobia, such an approach feels not just timely, but absolutely essential.
Please visit the exhibition’s website to see the works of all the artists:
Website: https://who-am-i-show.art
