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Eva Fomitski
SPILL ’NYY KOD (Shared Code) is an installation project that explores the mechanisms of totalitarian power and the politics of coercion through which the Soviet system attempted to transform the political identity of Ukrainian society between the 1920s and the 1970s. The project is based on the artist’s family archive, preserved despite deportations, confiscations of property, and political repression.
The archive contains material evidence of totalitarian control over the body, labor, and resources: tax certificates, supply records, NKVD documents, as well as German receipts from the period of the Second World War. These documents reveal how the state system transformed human life into a resource, while survival itself became a form of resistance.
The central figure of the project is the Ukrainian peasant — a historical subject placed at the center of collectivization policies, one of the primary targets of Soviet repression, and at the same time a symbol of resistance to the system.
Through archival photographs, documents, and spatial installation, the artist reflects on how historical catastrophes leave traces in the experiences and behavioral patterns of subsequent generations.
“I focus on the figure of the Ukrainian peasant as a symbol of resistance and a primary target of repression. Shared Code is my personal way of processing trauma — not as a historical fact, but as a phenomenon that has shaped the mental codes of later generations. The title refers to invisible behavioral strategies that unite those who survived a collective catastrophe and unconsciously transmitted these patterns to the next generations.”
The central element of the installation is a light-and-shadow projection system in which archival photographs from the family archive are transferred as negatives onto transparent acrylic plates. In a darkened space, these images are activated by light, forming shadows on the walls — a kind of “ghosts of the past.”
When direct light is directed onto the plates, the specific interaction between the paint and the material surface allows the negatives to transform into positive images. In this way, the installation acquires an interactive dimension: the viewer, using a light source, becomes an active participant in the process of “developing” the images. Gradually, shadows turn into recognizable faces, and fragments of the archive become personalized stories.
Eva Fomitski (b. 2001, Kharkiv, Ukraine) is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of installation, photography, sound, and media art. Her practice focuses on the exploration of social and political discourses, particularly entrenched behavioral patterns and experiences of the past that continue to shape contemporary reality.
Her works have been presented at international exhibitions, biennials, and art institutions across Europe, including Pandora Gallery (Berlin), Yermilov Centre for Contemporary Art (Kharkiv), the Leibnitz Biennale of Photography (Austria), as well as exhibition spaces such as Kunsthalle Graz, Arka Arka Gallery (Vienna), and raum Gallery (Graz).
In her practice, Fomitski often works with archival materials, documentary traces, and personal histories, employing artistic strategies that combine research-based approaches with spatial installations.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and studied curatorial practices at YermilovArtSchool (Kharkiv) and in the Curatorial Lessons program (Association for Curatorial Education, Graz). She is a member of the photographic collective MYPH and has participated in exhibitions and artistic residencies across Europe.
Currently, she is based in Berlin and studies in the Art and Media (Kunst und Medien) program at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).