WHAT CAME THROUGH 2026
What Came Through began with a simple question: What happens when two human beings try to communicate across a wall of propaganda, loneliness, fear, technology, and political identity?
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, I began using my cell phone to enter online spaces where Russians were looking for anonymous personal connections. I wasn't looking for an argument. I wanted to see if it was possible to have a human conversation with someone on the other side of a political divide that seemed almost impossible to cross.
I shared photographs, handmade signs, political cartoons, and drawings made by Ukrainian children. Sometimes I received photographs and personal stories in return. Other times there was silence, suspicion, anger, or a conversation that simply stopped.
The work grew out of those encounters.
I am interested in what happens to an image or an idea as it moves from one person to another. A photograph can be evidence, propaganda, memory, or manipulation. A child's drawing can carry a truth that a political argument cannot. A phone screen can bring two strangers together while simultaneously keeping them physically and emotionally separated.
