FOTODOK is proud to announce Yana Kononova‘s solo exhibition Radiations of War, hosted at Rotterdam’s WORM from 8 May to 15 June 2025. The exhibition opening marks the launch of the artist’s first photobook, co-published by FOTODOK and XYZ Books. Pairing Kononova’s photographs with poetry by Joyelle McSweeney, both the exhibition and the Radiations of War publication have been developed as part of the Creative Europe initiative Intergalactica: Books for Culture Without Borders.
In Kononova’s terms, war does not end when the noise of explosions fades. It lingers, saturating the land and embedding itself in the silence of devastated landscapes. The Radiations of War project traces this persistence through Ukraine—not as a documentary record, but as an encounter with a terrain where disaster continues after impact, turning the land into both witness and archive. When the frontline recedes, the ruins left behind reflect a landscape in transformation, charged with that which has passed through it. Kononova’s images are evidence of this process, revealing how violence settles into the earth—lingering in the weight of absence.
For the artist, the term ‘radiations’ evokes the composite, polluted nature of how war is experienced. It evokes more than the eye perceives: a hum or a tremor that alters our sense of space, that moves through memory, through the body, beyond the body, across generations. Here, war is neither an event nor a singular catastrophe but a process without end, radiating outward and rippling across the land.
Yana Kononova began working on the Radiations of War series in March 2022. She has since stayed and worked in areas formerly occupied by Russian troops, territories affected by active combat or locations that have endured the terror of missile strikes. Employing a medium format camera, Kononova’s work documents war crimes, destroyed civilian infrastructure, the efforts of Ukrainian emergency services, and the bodies of both fallen soldiers and civilian victims.
Opening:
Thursday 8 May, 17:00 – 20:00,
18:30 – Q&A with Yana Kononova & Joyelle McSweeney and the book launch.
Location: S/ash Gallery at WORM, Boomgaardsstraat 71, 3012 BN Rotterdam
Opening hours exhibition:
Every Thursday to Sunday (14:00-19:00), entry is free.
Credits:
Artist: Yana Kononova | Texts: Joyelle McSweeney | Curator: Daria Tuminas | Production: Marta Camagna, FOTODOK and WORM | Graphic Design: Kakkalakki Studio – João Linneu and Fernanda Fajardo | Copy Editor: George H. King | Organisational partner: WORM.
Financial support: Creative Europe, the City of Utrecht and the Mondriaan Fund.
Bios:
Yana Kononova holds a PhD in Sociology and a graduate diploma in Art & Curatorial Practice from the New Center for Research & Practice. She was born on Pirallahi island in the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan—a region shaped by oil and gas extraction. During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, her family emigrated to Ukraine. Centred on “weird ecologies and geographies”, Kononova’s practice involves ecocritical inquiries, treating landscapes as protagonists and engaging with their sensibilities. Through analogue photography, collage, installation and printmaking, she investigates the tactile qualities of images, navigating the threshold between photographic materiality and the act of visual representation. Her work draws on contemporary philosophical approaches from the theory-fiction genre, informing her perspective on landscape. In 2019, Kononova won the Bird in Flight Prize in emerging Photography, and in 2022 was the recipient of the Hariban Award, presented by Benrido. Her works have been widely exhibited in Ukraine and abroad. Nominated by FOTODOK, she has participated in the FUTURES talent network since 2023.
Guggenheim Fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, drama and prose, a well-known critic, and a vital publisher of international literature in translation. McSweeney’s latest book, Death Styles, appeared from Nightboat Books in Spring 2024; her previous title, Toxicon and Arachne (2020), was called “frightening and brilliant” by Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker and earned her the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. McSweeney’s 2014 essay collection, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults, is widely regarded as a visionary work of eco-criticism. Her debut poetry volume, The Red Bird, inaugurated the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2001, while her verse play, Dead Youth, or the Leaks, inaugurated the Leslie Scalapino Prize for Innovative Women Performance Artists in 2014. With Carmen Maria Machado, she was the guest editor of Best American Experimental Writing 2020. She lives in South Bend, Indiana and teaches at the University of Notre Dame.
