Anna Perepechai
Tears of Things
Anna Perepechai (1989, Poltava, UA) is a visual artist and photographer who has been living and working in Germany and Ukraine since 2014. From a migrant perspective, she investigates how colonial and imperial violence inscribes itself into landscapes, bodies, and, everyday objects, particularly in the context of formerly Sovietized societies. Central themes of her work include witnessing, memory, and states of temporal and emotional incompleteness. Her practice combines documentary and subjective approaches, cameraless and lens-based photography, writing, and archival materials.
Tears of Things is a multimedia body of work reflecting on the Russian war against Ukraine from the artist’s personal perspective. As a Ukrainian migrant living in Germany—where she arrived as a volunteer in 2014 and unexpectedly remained—the artist weaves memories, losses, and observations into an exploration of war, migration, and resistance. The project is rooted in Perepechai’s home region of Chernihiv, bordering Russia and Belarus, which has been under constant threat since 2014. The full-scale invasion in 2022 directly affected her family, and experiences of occupation and loss continue to shape the work. Tears of Things brings together photography, text, video, and material-based practices. It addresses grief and fragmentation alongside resistance, care, and memory work, combining documentary observation with experimental forms to bridge past, present, and an uncertain future. Within this submission, several projects from Tears of Things are presented, including the eponymous installation with which the body of work began.