For an artist, a situation like forced emigration is not a problem to solve in pursuit of comfort but an obligation to seek and speak the truth, to dig for deeper answers:
systemic, philosophical, and aesthetic.
Art is an effort. To stick to the truth in the age when it has no value.
My name is Vladislav Valerian Iakubovskii. I am an artist,
photographer, and writer from the swampy north, where the rivers are deep, the seas are frozen, the forests are thick, and silence still wins out over the noise of the engines. I was forced to flee my native land to avoid being killed, being made to kill, or being silenced.
I now wander through places that will or will not welcome me, if only for a short time.
Oppressors have taken away my home, irreversibly ruined my health, and killed someone I loved.
And my art has become integral to my struggle.
I use abstract and meditative, deadpan and symbolic
photography, text, and video art
to confront what I consider evil.
My recent artistic endeavours include a screening of my short
experimental film “Wisps” (2021-2022) in one of the emigrant’s
spaces in Tbilisi; graduation from an online department of the
Rodchenko School of Art and Photography (2021-2022); an
anti-dictatorship group exhibition in Roots Gallery in Pisa, Italy of “Colour Snatcher” (2023);
an artwork consisting of photographs and texts about my travels around Turkey during the recent presidential election; and an
upcoming exhibition (in the same gallery) of my photographs and texts made while travelling in western Georgia, the work is called “Burnt Lavender” (2023) and is also being hosted by déréal digital now; becoming a member of f37 union of photographers. I am now finishing my series of photographs, texts, and found objects made in Anaklia, a deserted small town on the Georgian border with Abkhasia.
