Grief, sorrow, loss—all of that is one of the hardest topics to reflect on, not in a straightforward way. Of course, it is impossible to forget the Pieta motif, which literally demonstrates all the pain that a mother can have when losing a child. However, this does not mean that no different strategies exist in this area.

Anastasiya Mykhaylova is a photo and video artist based in London. Originally from Ukraine, her background is closely connected with the classical art system, but the moment she took a camera in her hands, she understood that new media had much more to offer her in terms of creative possibilities.

Her oeuvre is a form of self-reflective archaeology where the artist studies heritage themes and personal and collective memories. Her work engages with emotion's metaphysical and anthropomorphic aspects, offering a more abstract interpretation of identity and presence. All of this led her to one of the most poetical and metaphysical at the same time photo series – I See You Everywhere I Go, which is a love letter filled with grief because of the loss of her grandfather.

The outline Mykhaylova gives to her project says: After the passing of my grandfather, our house carried remnants of his soul. His presence lingered in the peaceful creaks of the floorboards and the lights that flickered above the table where he used to work. With this experience, I got to know grief as a magical presence that looms in the quiet spaces between moments, both haunting and tender in its embrace. Furthermore, it is obvious that she implies some of the Magical Realism aesthetics and a bit of De Chiricoesque visual elements that create a strong pattern of absence.

The fact that the artist chose not just one setting but a multitude of locations, demonstrates her ability to work and develop the topic she studies in different environments. The photographs of the house, are not mundane snapshots of where her grandfather has lived, in fact they go beyond the familiar. These are locations that build a story of a person who became an ephemeral object, a glimpse in one’s mind. If the artist continues to work in this area, she will definitely remain in contemporary art history as a female photographer who mastered the poetics of loss.

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