Yekateryna Grygorenko

Yekateryna Grygorenko (b. 1996, Mersin) graduated from the Painting Department of Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Fine Arts in 2019 and completed her Master’s degree in Painting at the same university in 2022. As an artist of Ukrainian origin living in Türkiye, her artistic practice reflects on processes of cultural construction, language, and borders, addressing these concepts through the lens of the living, experiencing body. At the core of her research and artistic production lies the relationship between body and mind, along with the uncanniness between the inner and outer dimensions of the body; this axis converges into a conceptual framework shaped by posthumanism. By approaching these notions through philosophical, artistic, and psychoanalytic frameworks, she questions the multi-layered nature of individual existence. Grygorenko’s artistic practice is interdisciplinary and not confined to a specific material or technique. In her production process, she adopts a hybrid approach on both material and conceptual levels, aiming to develop an interdisciplinary language that embraces the expressive freedom offered by art.

How to Belong Here 

None of us can simply choose another language, as though we could completely abandon our previous history and freely opt for another one. What we inherit as culture, history, language, tradition, and a sense of identity is not destroyed; it is fragmented, questioned, and rewritten.

Iain Chambers 

As an artist of Ukrainian origin who was born in Türkiye and has lived in Türkiye for approximately twenty-nine years, I experience how my own identity is shaped and recorded through these borders. Throughout the SAHA Studio process, while thinking around the phrase “How Does One Become From Here” and simultaneously being in the middle of a citizenship process, I transform the way the state defines the individual into a living archive. Identity is not a card or a document; it is a concept that is constantly renewed, worn down, and experienced; independent of language, yet forced to be defined within the boundaries of language. While the obligation to submit documents every year for the state to register me once again serves as a reminder that migration is not a condition but rather a mode of existence, on the other hand, feeling a sense of belonging to the country of my birth is becoming increasingly complex. Having never lived in Ukraine, speaking Russian as the child of a family raised during the Soviet period, and the new social divisions created by the war today leave one’s existence on the other side of an invisible border. This is not a direct exclusion but rather the internalization of a feeling of estrangement; as the language of the place one belongs to changes, that place no longer recognizes the person. Thus, between two geographies, neither fully inside nor completely outside, one continues to exist in a constant in-between state, within an “intermediate identity.” Documents such as repeatedly issued birth certificates, notarizations, sworn translations, and biometric photographs become not only proof of validity but also the sole condition for visibility and survival. Therefore, while the project archives and processes the procedures of countries to which one can never fully belong, it simultaneously questions the definition of rootlessness, as well as culture, language, and identity.

The first step of the research and its conceptual process begin with biometric portraits. The biometric photograph is a performative space in which the state enacts its borders, rules, and methods of identification upon the individual’s face; it is shaped by a demand rather than an aesthetic concern. The sterility of these images serves not to produce a portrait but to other the subject and enable bureaucracy to perform its own discourse. These cold, anonymous, and demand-driven official documents initially provide the sterile face desired by the state, but later undergo deconstruction and the biometric photograph is brought to ruin. As the migrant body encounters these mechanisms of registration, memory is pushed into the in-between, into the void of limbo, while the irony and humor of the rigid rules imposed by the state are brought into play. A biometric foot, a calf, or a breast enters the frame. The process evolves from the biometric portrait to the biometric body and ultimately into a biometric map of memory. This state of fragmentation is not an attempt to find roots or reclaim a national identity; rather, it is an experience of complete dislocation and a ghostly mode of existence. 

Matryoshkas, another component of the installation, function as a critique of culture and iconography as well as a discussion of borders. Traditionally symbolizing lineage, origin, and a protected wholeness, these forms become reflections of bureaucratic layers within the project. However, these matryoshkas contain symbols absent from their traditional form; creatures and floral forms drawn from a personal visual archive accumulated over many years seep onto their surfaces. As cultural symbols associated with Türkiye and Ukraine hybridize, transform, deteriorate, and reject the idea of a single nation, a new language emerges. The object sabotages its own matryoshka icon from within. Although commonly associated with Russians, this form, whose origins trace back to China, is detached from its historical ties within the installation and directly questions the concepts of borders and belonging: Who establishes these borders? Who names them, and to whom do they belong? Shaped according to identities and memories, these icons break free from imposed official molds and transform into “Katrushhkas,” finding their own mode of existence. 

Fixed onto an iron construction representing a rigid, angular, and rational bureaucratic skeleton, the amorphous, intestine-like stuffed installation occupies the space as the point at which the project confronts the concept of the “flag.” Representing no nation, this form exists entirely as an organ or body part. Exempt from protocols, it cannot be assembled, folded, or waved. In the geography where one is born, while the name of what one belongs to constantly changes, identity never forms a whole; instead, it layers, multiplies, and is erased. Therefore, this structure belongs to the collapse of representation. It carries not the victory of a nation, but a fragmented and hybridized body. 

The SAHA Studio process has functioned both as a site of production and as a space of witnessing for this work. While the project demonstrates that identity is not only a bureaucratic matter but also a bodily one, it renders visible the permeable boundaries between nation, state, and selfhood. Every document, every record, and every trace serve as a reminder that identity is not a fixed datum, but an amorphous living entity continuously rewritten at the borders of rules.