BIO

Hanna Litman lived in Odessa till February 2022 and describes herself as a restless writer, a free poet, an inquisitive journalist, unrecognized art critic and photographer. From early childhood, her life was dedicated to the Word. She published essays in the city’s publications under the creative pseudonym Anna Litman and created a website about culture. She is currently preparing a book of poems titled “Bridge in Silence” and a non-fiction novel titled “Letters to God or Heaven Hears Everything” which are about the past, present, philosophy, war and dreams.

Story of experience of risk, relocation and/or exile

Artist’s account: The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began. At around five in the morning, Ukrainian cities began to be bombed, including Odessa. Life turned into horror. Friends and employers left, there was nothing to live for. They bombed the workshop where I lived and worked. There was no money to photograph anything because there was no work. Panic attacks began. But I still wanted to work in my field and develop as a creative person.

Projects created during the residency period

Litman believes that God, art and war are three paradigms that accompany our lives now. “#Form of cognition” is a project that will answer the questions that each of us now faces. “How to live a full life and create when there is war and death all around? How does the sacred affect art? How does art react to modernity?”

The project includes three interviews with artists, three articles, five philosophical essays, a script for a documentary film and photographs. Thanks to the project, the artist has discovered how Ukrainian artists have changed over the past year and a half in spiritual and historical terms, examined sacredness in modern art and rethought war with a new meaning.