Exhibition
Avgang 2026: Yanina Zaichanka / This Picture Never Existed
This Picture Never Existed is Yanina Zaichanka's individual MFA graduation project.
Dearest father and mother,
I hope this finds you well.
This is the latest picture of me.
My eyes are blue-brown,
And my hair is the colour of a chestnut.
I am fairly tall.
Sending you my best wishes,
Kind regards,
Your daughter Klava
Moving through layers of absence – silences, secrets, and omissions – Yanina Zaichanka seeks to connect with their late grandmother, Klava, whose life was marked by the Soviet-era repressions. With the only photograph from Klava’s adolescence now missing, the artist is left only with a faint recollection and persistent longing.
This missing photograph, conjured from memory in embroidery and in spoken word, forms the is the exhibition’s central motif. The multi-channel sound installation gathers repeated attempts to narrate Klava’s life story from fragmented, flawed accounts. Recorded across 18 different days, the retellings shift, shaped by repetition. Together, the sound work and embroidered replica underscore what cannot be recovered, while holding uncertainty and misremembering in view.
This picture never existed is a solo exhibition Yanina Zaichanka, developed as the artist’s MFA graduation project at the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Yanina Zaichanka is a Belarusian artist living in Oslo. Their practice explores family history in relation to broader historical and political processes, attending to collective trauma alongside more private, lived experience. Working across textile media, drawing, and performance, Zaichanka emphasises the durational qualities of these modes of expression.
Zaichanka has presented work in a range of contexts, including non-institutional spaces. Recent presentations include I would like to meet you in the street, shown across several sites in Tinn Kommune in connection with a residency at Rjukan Solarpunk Academy (2025); Common Grounds, a group exhibition organised by TekstLab at Gamle Munch (2025); and Cyber Fluids, part of [up]Loaded Bodies at Meta.Morf, Trondheim International Biennale for Art and Technology (2024). In 2023, Zaichanka participated in PRAKSIS Residency 22: Repression – Expression // Violence – Creative Resistance, developed in collaboration with PRIO and Motaz Al Habbash.
Venue: PRAKSIS (2nd floor, Rådhusgata 19, in Anatomigården)
Opening Thu Feb 5, 18:00-20:00
Exhibition period: Feb 6-15
Open Wed-Sun 12:00-16:00
