From March 20th to the 22th, Izba Arts present a brand new festival and exhibition of works at Drop-In from across the former Eastern Bloc focused around belonging, myth and renewal. Weaving together stories old and new through a series of films, performances, paintings and interactive installations, the show brings together artists reclaiming and reimagining Eastness and its culture as a source of connection with ourselves, nature and one another.
Full Programme:
Exhibition Information:
Featuring works by 15 artists, this show co-curated by Margarita Makhanova and Ksenia Kazintseva galvanises the energy of this community to unpack how experiences of migration and assimilation speak universally and how notions of belonging and visual language from this region have impacted British culture. It overlaps with the Spring Equinox and celebrates Maslenitsa – an Eastern European traditional event that sends away the pagan goddess Marena / Mara, who symbolises cold and death, by burning her figuring made out of hay, and welcomes in spring. This celebration later became aligned with many Orthodox traditions even non-religious communities partake in around this time including an alternative to Shrove Tuesday, using up animal products in pancakes before Lent. This entire time period is focused on reflection and renewal.
Whether you’re able to join us in person, or want to know about the exhibition remotely, we’ve chosen to create a walk-through of the works and artist stories involved that you can refer back to:
Films (projected):
Origins
Patricia is a Romanian interdisciplinary artist rooted in performing and visual art.
She explores how identity shapes us – more than we often give it credit for. Modernity made us forget our ancestral past, but we must remember the untold stories of generations – the violence, the sadness, the joy, the land, the oppression, the tradition.
She is the first woman in her lineage that has been given a voice. This piece is about the influence of roots, and tradition in one’s journey. It aims to picture the untold stories of oppressed women
Zula is a London-based documentary photographer, specialising in community-based portraiture and documentary storytelling. She focuses on themes of migration, Eastern Europe, and queer communities, drawing inspiration from her Polish heritage and upbringing. Through her photography, Zula aims to amplify voices often overlooked, using an intentional approach to explore the complexity of identity and the power of human connection.
Geography of Strangers
This project brings together two multimedia installations that examine the shifting political landscape in the UK alongside the rise of right-wing politics across Europe, while interrogating the role of women within the domestic sphere. The political transformations following the collapse of state socialism across Eastern Europe and Central Asia continue to shape contemporary nationalist rhetoric, gender politics, and ideas of tradition. The resurgence of right-wing ideologies across Europe echoes patterns long familiar within post-socialist contexts: the instrumentalisation of “family values,” the re-domestication of women, and the framing of the nation as something to be protected from internal and external “others.” By focusing on the domestic space, my work reflects on how ideology enters the intimate sphere, how kitchens, living rooms, and family rituals become sites where political narratives are reproduced or quietly resisted.
If We Believe in Time
Diana Olifirova was born in Ukraine and have lived in London for over a decade. In recent years, living nomadically and being unable to return “home” home have shaped my relationship to place and belonging. Working with pinhole photography and long exposure, using meditation and focus as tools for each capture, Diana films herself, while transitioning between states — moving between countries, temporary homes, and identities, merging memory and presence, thinking about the idea of “home” and how fragile and meaningful it has become to me.
Born in Poland, Iga Koncka is a feminist artist and thinker. She holds a BA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales and an MA in Contemporary Photography: Practices and Philosophies from Central Saint Martins. Her research interests mainly concern feminist issues and public and private relations. Inspired by her Slavic roots and shaped by her international experiences, she creates work that attempts to transcend the limitations of a specific genre. Her multi-media practice embraces the beauty of different materials, processes, and ideas. She often uses critical play with a dose of joyful irony. She uses the notion of the postmodern image creation and image consumption culture to inform her practice.
Sofya Kryuk is a bilingual stage actress and theatre creator whose practice bridges rigorous Eastern European dramatic training with the contemporary British stage. Sofya is a graduate of the renowned Shchepkin Higher Theatre School, specializing in psychological drama and deep character exploration.
Sofya’s current project, Revolt, is an international theatrical collaboration that explores the deepest, most complicated relationship an artist can have: the claustrophobic battle between the inner supporter and the ruthless “inner critic”. Directed by visual artist and scenographer Katerina Jakovleva, Sofya leads the physical performance alongside live stage practitioners Kristina Baeva and Evgenia Vinogradova, with sound design by Alina R.J.
Yana is a Russian-born artist and she has always been driven by her desire for creating something meaningful that could transcend her long after she perishes. Every artwork Yana makes is deeply personal and a bit selfish, a true reflection of herself. Yana loves exploring rage, grief, sadness, and hopefulness, that comes with being away from your home, family, culture.
Ksenia Kazintseva is an interdisciplinary artist with an interest in textile pattern and folk imagery, exploring migration and loss of home as well as her ‘Eastness’ and the acceptance of her in part non-Western identity despite growing up in the UK. Her workshops, immersive installations, poetry and paintings create opportunities to reflect and connect with ourselves, each other and nature. Her work is an attempt to return to a sense of home through nostalgia while creating a new one collaboratively with participants. She’s shown at the Saatchi Gallery, Fanzineist Vienna and beyond. She co-runs Izba Arts – a cultural platform supporting voices from the former Eastern Bloc (Central & Eastern Europe and Central Asia).
Works part of this show are a fabric book featuring the many misspellings and mispronounciations of Ksenia’s name and bilingual poetry contemplating the migrant identity, home and renewal through loss.
Paulina Korobkiewicz (b. 1993, Suwałki, Poland) is a London-based photographer and visual artist. Her work explores themes of cultural identity, memory, and the transformation of social spaces. Her projects focus on the visual and cultural landscape of her hometown and region as well as that of her current residence in the UK, documenting everyday scenes and environments with a sense of nostalgia and socio-political commentary, drawing from her own experience of migration. Her practice involves community-based research, conducting workshops, and mentoring. In addition to developing long-form personal projects, Paulina continues to undertake commissions and residencies. Two works from her series Udarny Trud (Hard Labour) are on show here.
Konrad Koźmiński, born 1989 in Cracow, Poland; photographer, self-publisher, social activist. Student of the Institute of Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic. Committed to documenting the changing world. His work focuses on the observation of peripheral areas and the search for living folklore. Particularly inspired by the countries of the Balkan Peninsula. Has participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. Author and editor of the publication ‘Autumn Sense’. For many years co-organiser of the ‘Photographic Circle’ in a small district town.
These works are part of a series documenting Bulgarian traditions of scaring away winter and welcoming in spring, and is part of a series titled Whith ghosts and souls.
Usva Inei is a non-binary artist and art educator who mainly works through various forms of printmaking. Stemming from their lived experiences as a queer Russian immigrant, Usva reimagines and reclaims traditional Slavic imagery and patterns by bringing in elements of anti-war and pro-queer protest. Through their artwork, Usva hopes to consolidate a desire to connect with one’s heritage with a fight against a government that does not respect human rights, allow freedom of speech, or acknowledge queer identities.
Lesya creates abstract landscapes that explore the boundary between reality and perception. Walking without a fixed plan, she follows her intuition, light, and subtle signs in nature, focusing on fragments, textures, and quiet details where accidental compositions reveal hidden rhythms and a quiet mathematical order. The camera becomes a tool for attention rather than control, allowing images to emerge naturally and inviting viewers to slow down and look more closely. P.S. Her Instagram account was lost after her arrest during a protest in Moscow. She is currently developing a new website.
Aneliya Stoyanova (Anny) completed an MA at Staffordshire University, where she had the opportunity to explore the intersection of craft and technology. She fuses nature and architecture-inspired forms with digital innovation, using VR and parametric design to 3D-print in Parian porcelain.
Lusine is a London-based portrait photographer exploring identity, belonging, and the quiet tension between visibility and vulnerability.
Working with cinematic light and restrained colour, she creates intimate images that balance strength and fragility. Her practice is shaped by themes of cultural transition, femininity, and the human need to be truly seen beyond social roles. Through portraiture, she aims to reveal emotional depth within everyday life, inviting viewers to pause and reconsider how we look at one another — and what remains unseen.
Polina Nochka is a London-based interdisciplinary artist and visual communicator whose practice investigates the relationships between people and places under shifting social and political contexts. Polina’s work unfolds through mapping, data visualisation, collage, and installation, creating spaces for audiences to interact, reflect, and engage with the hidden layers of history and experience. Drawing on archival documents, site visits, and collected viewpoints, Polina constructs layered visual narratives that contrast multiple perspectives and uncover the complex histories embedded within urban environments. By experimenting with visual methods of representation, Polina seeks to reveal the richness of past experiences and their continuing resonance to contemporary life.
What does a man want? (installation)
Viktoria Pozdniakova is a doctor and editor from Saint-Petersburg based in London. Her current project is dedicated to masculinity. It consists of photos and interviews with different men from Saint-Petersburg and London. In her work, Viktoria explores how men from different cultures understand masculinity, whether gender defines people in general or how it doesn’t, depending on their definition of it.
She runs Diplopia magazine which also features video interviews and interactive engagements with these interviews, allowing audiences to build connection with the participants of the project and answer the questions for themselves, exploring the way the may be affected (or not) by systems we are placed within.
WEIGHT ON IT is a durational ritual centered on reflection and care through feeling-focused craft.
Beads — scattered like secrets — are slowly gathered into words and poems that call back to queer migrant histories.
The poem that Emilia beads was originally written for a performance at the Queer Migrations Festival 2025; it is about the threads of connection to ancestry, longing across estrangement and renegotiating belonging.
The collective beading ritual draws from Tatar cultural marriage practices — traditions that acknowledge departure from family in order to build something new. Beading becomes both preparation and remembrance, a reflection on transformation.
Consider: What do you want to carry forward? What do you want to release? Create a word, a short phrase, or a sentence with the beads.
Performed by Emilia Nurmukhamet, facilitated by Amy-Rose Edlyn and Dear Annie from Bold Mellon Collective. Previously featured at the Queens House (2026), Firepit Art Gallery & Neverwhere Exhibition (2025).
I’m a Polish artist based in London working across drawing, photography, video and curation. My practice is rooted in my Eastern European identity and how it collides with the environments I explore. I work with streams of consciousness and serendipitous moments in the making process, letting abstraction emerge naturally. My work has been shown in Bristol, London and Glasgow, and consistently returns to the tension between where I come from and where I am.
Svetlana Kochneva explores memory, connection, and perception through abstract collage. Her work brings together fragments of form that evoke cultural association, human presence, and the shifting nature of memory. She is interested in how context and experience shape the way we see, remember, and make sense of the world.
Mariana Lebedeva is a 2D Animator and Artist, specialising in character centred works. Her style resembles J. C. Leyendecker and is filled with motion. Mariana is also a co-founder of an animation studio called ‘Palki Studio’.
Much of my work explores the tension between strength and vulnerability, examining how stability is constructed. Using oil and acrylic on canvas, I focus on the fragile architecture of human experience: its emotional depth, volatility, and capacity for resilience.
Moving from country to country, in search of a place to call home, I have experienced the longing for stability and the tenuous sense of belonging. During this time, I began to see the world as something unpredictable yet full of possibilities, much like a balloon: easily unsettled, yet capable of carrying lightness and joy. This image became a central metaphor in my work. Balloons hold pressure and risk collapse, but they are also enduring symbols of celebration. Through vivid colour and carefully constructed forms, I transform instability and fear into visual expressions of hope, where moments of crisis hold the potential for growth and transformation.
I’m a Lithuanian artist under a pseudonym Mildonski. I’m based in West London and I work primarily in oil painting. I have graduated Fine Art BA from Goldsmiths, University of London two years ago. My practice explores identity through contemporary and social lenses. Themes explored are: displacement, trauma, feminism, immigration, intimacy. I often use abstract shapes to give the viewer more freedom of thought.
