Series - FotoSlovo 2025 - Category « Experimental photography »

"Skin and bones! Your face is sunken! Only ribs sticking out! Something is wrong with you! Why are you so skinny? Don’t they feed you at home? You need to wear oversize clothes to hide a body! You need to gain weight to be beautiful!" - These phrases once became my shadow.

Being exhausted with two child births, I unexpectedly lost my normal weight just in a week, and went to 57 kg, being 181 cm height. My face truly became sunken, my ribs really stuck out. But the main thing was that I lost myself among the criticism of people around. I couldn’t gain weight for long 5 years. Exactly until the moment when I finally accepted myself with all my "flaws". Then the weight slowly started returning to me..

For my project I was making self-portraits and then creating 3D-collages. I was using red stripe (as a symbol of self-boundaries that other people violate), and red dot (as a symbol of point of support I was hardly looking for). I dedicate my project to all “not-ideal” women so that each of them may say to herself: I’m not perfect, but it means I’m unique.