Bücher von Sebastian Wells

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thought-provoking questions about masculinity in war through the recent work of Vsevolod Kazarin, Alex Mashtaler's yet unpublished photographs juxtapose the innocence of youth with the unforgiving harshness of reality - a reality shaped by Ukraine's colonial past and a present challenged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.

Since October 2022, the editors Ivanna Kozachenko, Andrii Ushytskyi, Vsevolod Kazarin and Sebastian Wells as well as the art direction around Anne-Lene Proff and Peter Bünnagel from Kollektiv Scrollan and the Berlin-based publishing house SHIFT BOOKS have been working on a second issue of the magazine. In addition to photography, film, contemporary art, literature and, most importantly, the everyday life of young people in Ukraine, the magazine attempts to convey the complex reality of life under the permanent gaze of Russian aggression through the works of talented and already well-known Ukrainian artists.On 132 pages, the new issue pays special attention to the stories of people from the now-occupied territories of Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, who have already been confronted with the war since 2014. The cover of the new issue was designed exclusively for Söomiya by renowned artist Alevtina Kakhidze. It shows a woman surrounded by missiles and drones, raising her hand. "Our hands became more skilful during the war," says Kakhidze, who has already created hundreds of drawings during the war and drew a tardigrade on the back cover of the magazine - the only creature to survive the Chernobyl nuclear accident.