Alina Zamanova

Alina Zamanova is a Ukrainian artist who lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. Since the 24th of February, 2022, Zamanova has been documenting the full-scale invasion war in her home Ukraine. Directly from Ukraine, she is responding to the horrific but at the same time heroic scenes from occupied cities where Ukrainian people are protecting the freedom and future of the whole democratic world. The work and the life of an artist, and all of the people of Ukraine, were forcefully disrupted in one night and will never be the same. During the first 5 months of the war Zamanova was working from the place in the western part of Ukraine, where she evacuated with her family. 

Zamanova paints children and women whose lives were damaged or lost; she shows the pain of the families and searches for any possible freedom for their souls through art. Their spirits must be forever engraved in our memories. The world must see the truth and never close its eyes. During the evacuation, an artist started painting the self-portrait series with Ukrainian soil, like a visual diary dedicating each portrait to a day she made it on during the war. Such self-portraits are not the same as "before"; they expose her collected pain and sufferings for all Ukrainian people, which are seen in the painted heavy eyes, imperfect skin, and tense facial muscles. 'Before and after' is now widely used within the Ukrainian community referring to life before the 24th of February and after the full-scale invasion started, and Zamanova's art was instinctively divided in such directions too. Now Zamanova is back in Kyiv and keeps working on new paintings and volunteering.