Maryna Shtanko

Maryna Shtanko (b.1992 in Poltava, Ukraine) is a visual artist working primarily with photography and exploring bookmaking, textile-based processes, embroidery, and video-performances. She has a Master’s degree in German Language & Literature (2014). After Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Maryna fled to Germany. She is currently based in Kiel, where she got her second Master’s degree in Photography at Muthesius Kunsthochschule in 2025. Maryna has been a recipient of several awards, grants, and scholarships. Her work has been exhibited in Ukraine, Switzerland, Austria, Lithuania, Germany, Slovenia among others.

Working across photography, textiles, bookmaking, and installation, I explore how physical materials can carry memory, uncertainty, and cultural meaning. Rather than treating photography as a fixed image, I am interested in its transformation through processes of fragmentation, layering, and interaction with the environment.
During the residency, I would like to further develop my ongoing research on the ecological and symbolic significance of soil in Ukraine. Soil is both a living material and a witness to history, carrying traces of war, agriculture, mythology, and cultural identity. I plan to investigate these different layers through reading, collecting local knowledge, and experimenting with soil as an active photographic material. This may include exposing photographs to soil, creating soil-based image processes, or testing how different types of earth physically alter photographic surfaces.
The residency offers an opportunity to slow down and approach the project through an open-ended research and production process. I am also interested in how site-specific material experiments can deepen my understanding of landscape as both a physical environment and a repository of memory, revealing the often invisible relationships between ecology, history, and image-making.