GRANTEE
The project Memoriupol is aimed at raising awareness about the city of Mariupol and its vivid history at war between 2014 and 2022, to bring to the public the stories about city life, its vibrant grassroots initiatives, vast opportunities, spaces, and its cultural and activist life during war. A similar project, also titled Memoriupol, was already developed by my team at Platform Tu last year in the form of a website collecting and commemorating the grassroots initiatives of the city: https://www.memoriupol.space/
In my current project, on the other hand, I want to focus more on personal stories, depicting the city as a live protagonist of a series of opinion pieces. The memories will be published once every two weeks on my personal blogs in English and Ukrainian and will also be featured on the website of Platform Tu (tu.org.ua).
Nine years ago I found myself, having to flee from the occupation of my hometown Donetsk and deciding to resettle; I found Mariupol, and decided it was the best place on earth to move on, only to lose everything later and run away again. I want to give a unique perspective that combines both the outside observer––as someone who came to the city for the first time in 2014 knowing nobody there; and the inside inhabitant––as someone who lived, worked, married, and felt at home in the city. Through the lens of an experienced internal refugee that has twice lost their home because of Russian aggression, I want to tell those stories of Mariupol during the Russo-Ukrainian War that were only noticeable to myself.
Over the course of six months, I plan to deliver 12 texts of minimum 2,000 characters each, accompanied by unique images that convey memories of Mariupol, covering the period between 2014 and 2022 and based on the author’s own diaries. My eight years in Mariupol tell the story not only of resistance and fight, but also of my own decolonization journey and my path to realizing my own nature and identity.