INVISIBLE TRAUMA  

Photos of the protest, photos taken with a mask on Instagram, and performance 

Weakness Street. Günter Grass Gallery / Gdańsk, Poland. 2022

Echoes. ECLAT Hybrid Festival. Hospitalhof church / Stuttgart, Germany. 2022

During protests, and revolutions, global media predominantly document visible forms of violence, such as bruising, torture, statistics and prison sentences. Meanwhile, the emotional consequences of state terror often remain unspoken. In these horrific accounts, the quieter, more mundane forms of oppression are often overlooked: constant fear, paranoia, helplessness and an absence of safe spaces while living under a repressive regime. The constant threat creates trauma that, because it is invisible, is considered less urgent, even though it shapes daily life and is one of the regime’s primary tools of control and suppression.

As the state of absence is difficult to visualise, I use one of the symbols of the 2020 protests in Belarus: a blank sheet of paper. This emerged during demonstrations against election fraud after the historic white-red-white flag was declared extremist. In response, people began placing blank sheets in their windows. Even this simple gesture could lead to arrest. The white paper later became a symbol of protest in China as well, known as the 'A4 Revolution' in 2022 — named after the blank A4-sized paper held by protesters. Although the Chinese protests were sparked by different reasons — namely, a reaction to the authorities' strict 'zero-Covid' policies involving barricading entire neighbourhoods and banning people from going outside — at their core, they shared the same frustration: an inability to express dissent in the ways available in democratic societies.

As part of the project Invisible Trauma, I collected stories and photographed respondents in collaboration with a Ukrainian human rights advocate Katya Pomazanaya. But when traditional methods of documentary photography became too dangerous, we turned to the digital space. Using a blank sheet of paper on glass as a metaphor for silence and erasure, we created an Instagram filter (masking the face with a white paper) and a Telegram chatbot for anonymously gathering stories. I no longer photograph participants or meet them in person. Instead, we built a space where people can take a photo and share their story safely and anonymously. For a time, this method enabled people to continue protesting — to express themselves publicly without fear of detention thanks to their anonymity.