SHIFT BOOKS

The subject of domestic violence is still highly relevant—and yet it is rarely discussed in public. In her first publication »The Cure«, Julie Legouez now addresses her very personal experiences with violence in a relationship. In ten chapters, »The Cure« describes the trauma and how the visual artist overcame her experiences in 2019. The book presents installative and conceptual works that were created over a period of two years.



Julie Legouez also deals with other highly emotional and relevant topics, such as heartbreak, addiction and grief.

»The Cure« makes an important political contribution to the debate on visibility, trauma and violence.

The third issue of Solomiya is as desperate as it is full of love, beauty, courage, and an unsettling longing for “a journey, an escape, and freedom,” as Yevhen, a young soldier from Odesa, puts it in War Dreams, a poignant series of portraits by Italian photographers Caimi&Piccini. While raising thought-provoking questions about masculinity in war through the recent work of Vsevolod Kazarin, Alex Mashtaler's yet unpublished photographs juxtapose the innocence of youth with the unforgiving harshness of reality - a reality shaped by Ukraine's colonial past and a present challenged by ongoing militarization. In interviews with the Solomiya Editors Andrii Ushytskyi, Ivanna Kozachenko and Sebastian Wells, Asia Bazdyrieva, Maxim Dondyuk, and Henrike Naumann further explore these complexities through their own perspectives and artistic practices. While Ivanna Kozachenko and the artist collective Commercial Public Art dissect the spatial strategies of the architecture built by Russian forces in the occupied territories of Ukraine, the writings of Lucy Zoria and Sebastian Wells offer diverse insights into the lived experiences of young Ukrainians abroad.

How does a German village get to Kyrgyzstan?

Before the autumn of 1988, Irina Unruh, who was nine years old, left Kyrgyzstan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, with her family. Two decades later, she returned
to Telman, her home village, which lies in the valley of the Chui River and is called Grünfeld by the older residents. Like its surrounding ones, the village was founded in the 1920s by refugee German Mennonites.

In her publication »Where The Poplars Grow,« Irina
Unruh delves into her family history and sensitively places her past within a historical context. Her documentary photographs tell stories of loss, origins, and the search for identity. Through the history of Russian Germans, Unruh tells her personal story of escape, displacement, and home.

The young artist Lexi van Dijk takes her courageous performances to the extreme. But after a negligent accident in which she seriously injures an influencer, she gives up her career and seeks refuge in nature. Between pigs and chickens, she hopes for supposed salvation when artificial intelligence suddenly knocks on her door and completely turns her life upside down. Caught between two realities, she is forced to radically question her view of love, physicality and the foundations of her previous existence. When does real life begin in the digital world?

With LEXI.exe, Swan Collective has written a fast-paced novel that reflects the technological developments of our near future in a tragicomic love story – without forgetting that despite all the virtuality, a creative body made of flesh and blood can offer the greatest resistance.