about m.

I am a kid of the 90s, with a childhood spent in post-soviet era Ukraine and soviet-era mass housing. I was raised in a family of architects, in the environment of their bohemian friends whom they had known from art school studies and in the environment of a state planning institute where my father worked throughout the roaring 90s. Yes, in Eastern Europe the roaring are the 1990s, not the 1920s. I still remember the first photo of me taken by their friend photographer, when I was six years old, and she developed the print in front of me. I went to a semi-private school, which raised a brutal awareness about the social class divisions, injustices, privileges and state of corruption in Ukraine at that time early on in my life. I followed my parents’ footsteps not because I wanted to become an architect but because I felt the pressure of inheritance. At that time, the roaring 90s were over, my parents established their own architectural practice, and my sister chose another profession. My university years and post-graduation I would describe as times when I didn’t exactly know what I was doing in this profession. Up until 2015, when I joined Zotov’s architectural bureau and was paid for standing up for social justice and ethics in my profession. And I have done it ever since, even after immigrating to the world’s mecca of capitalism called North America.