Felipe Jácome & Svitlana Onipko

Felipe Jácome & Svitlana Onipko (formed 2022, Warsaw) are an artistic duo respectively from Ecuador and Ukraine. Both photographers by trade, the two met in 2020 at a photoshoot in Kyiv where Onipko was also a dancer in the Ukrainian National Ballet. After Onipko and her family fled to Poland to escape the invasion, she and Jácome ran into each other by chance. Quickly, they organized a photoshoot in Warsaw, where they initiated the Unbroken Project.

Unbroken is made up of a series of portraits of Ukrainian ballerinas printed with ultraviolet ink on bullet casings held together with resin. Initiated as a charity project, works from Unbroken have exhibited widely around the world, including a massive outdoor installation for several months last year in Paris.

The title of the project is representative of its subjects, and of Onipko herself - brave artists who remain unbroken by the horrors of war. The superimposition of the dancers on top of the bullets creates a fascinating juxtaposition of beauty and violence. Like others before them - Robert Longo comes immediately to mind - Jácome & Onipko experiment with the discomfort caused by the bullets by turning them into something sickeningly beautiful. Here, the focus is not on the violence itself, but on a response to it. Unbroken serves as a strong example of a broader movement in Ukraine - performing artists, from painters to musicians, from ballerinas to playwrights, taking up arms in their own way to defend their country and their culture. The ballerinas stand as a voice of resistance, hovering above the violence.

Sonya: A Sunflower Network Project features four works in four different sizes by Jácome & Onipko, produced specifically for the exhibition.

Jacome’s work has been exhibited in London, Geneva, Amsterdam, Quito, La Paz and Washington DC.