(In)Visible, (Ir)Replaceable, (Un)Represented: Inequality and Discrimination Through an Artistic Feminist Lens

The core of this year’s interdisciplinary arts program Read more about the Her Lens: Ukrainian Focus and Her Lens: British Focus selections of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS–2026 programme in the curatorial text by Oleksandra Nabieva.

DOCU/SYNTHESIS adopts an intersectional feminist focus and consists of two moving image selections — Ukrainian and British. Each amplifies women’s voices, narratives, and representations, challenging gender stereotypes in its own way and resisting established, dominant regimes of visibility and remembrance. The program invites to reflect on and to bridge gaps in representation, and probing its limits.

Two of my films (While the gods were busy with another child and Art Class), were selected for this program.

I was in conversation with Oleksandra Nabieva on questions of violence and trauma, representation, exclusion and inclusion, memory, spaces and bodies, feminsized labor, disposability, and art.

The feminist‑focused strand Her Lens: British Focus will showcase While the Gods Were Busy with Another Child and Art Class by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, A Radical Duet and No Archive Can Restore You by Onyeka Igwe, as well as His Lens by Jess Stephens in collaboration with FLAMIN (The Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network). This part of the programme centres on revisiting colonial experience, delving into shared and personal archives, and exploring representation of women and LGBTQI communities, alongside historical and social inequalities.

The programme’s context was be expanded through thematic discussions: on 6 June, Ukrainian female artists delved into topics of memory, loss and the maternal experience; while on 8 June, British creators addressed visibility, inequality and discrimination through a feminist artistic lens.