Creative 2nd Place

In April 2022, Irina Shkoda left Ukraine for France. As a refugee, she entered a culture that was entirely foreign to her, which required her to adapt, to speak a new language, to submit to new rules: to lose parts of herself in order to be accepted. Through this project, she explores her personal experience of hospitality, both given and received.

According to the philosopher Jacques Derrida, hospitality has a dual aspect: ethical and political. It includes a power dynamic and an underlying violence. The guest – by their presence – imposes an Otherness that can unsettle or even transform their host. To make space in one’s home is to risk no longer being at home. Yet hospitality also holds the potential to transcend these tensions. It is an act of courage and faith – a gesture that dares to imagine unity despite all odds. Concepts in psychology highlight that boundaries are essential for preserving our integrity, but welcoming The Other is to open those boundaries, even if just for a moment. How can we trust, despite everything, The Other who surpasses us? How can we let The Other in, knowing we may never understand?

Irina Shkoda is a visual lens-based artist born in Kiev (Ukraine), based in Paris. Graduated from the School of Modern Photography Docdocdoc, Saint-Petersburg, in 2019.

The most important part of her work is dedicated to personal long-term projects that contemplate the notion of the sacred and the associated taboos. The impulse for research on this topic arose as a result of her adolescent experience, when she spent a significant part of her time in a convent.