FAMILIA Installation at the Millerntorwache, 2026
Visual and audio installation: objects, soundscape, photo, text. Installation at the Millerntorwache, as part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg.

How do people love each other when they come from countries that have become enemies? The ongoing project Familia depicts Russian-Ukrainian couples photographed between 2014 and 2026 in Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Germany. Yushko – born into a Russian-Ukrainian family – shares her personal history and that of many mixed families during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the subsequent war in the Donbas region, and Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. At the Millerntorwache, a former gate for entry and departure, the exhibition brings together pieces from several ongoing projects connected by personal experience, migration, and love.

The soundscape of the installation is composed of interviews recorded by a group of women who came together in Hamburg after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and have been collecting feelings in interviews that often remain hidden or feel forbidden. These feelings now find expression here, extending beyond the public spectrum of emotions. The unspoken has been given a voice. With: Nana Grinstein, Nadiia Humeniuk, Friederike Meltendorf, Natalia Reznichenko, Henrike Schmidt, Julia Solovieva, Julia Zeichenkind.

The exhibition is accompanied by public events: workshops, artist talks, guided tours and performative readings.
Millerntorwache is a division of the Museum of Hamburg History, operated by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S.