«Shunya» is an ongoing project describing quest for the emptiness and contradictions of this phenomenon. Inability to observe the world in its wholeness in the era of digital noise leads humanity to the feelings of total anxiety, constant fear and emptiness. My project captures the moment of consciousness observation and at the same inability of this observation.

I wanted to see stillness, eternity, to cover at one glance the circulating time stream and to stop neurotic movement forward. By interpreting common things, I liked to indulge into the state of existential documentation of all that’s happening.

Term «shunya» (empty, void, zero) is relative. For someone it means nothing, for others — eternal beginning. All the attempts to give this term different definitions contradict each other. Emptiness can be called not «empty» neither «not empty». However complete neglection is impossible.

Aside feeling related to this clear and simple from the first sigh word I got interested in its contradictions from the cognitive science, linguistic and scientific points to view. The work I got for today is the first attempt to conceptualize and visualize my personal attitude towards this term. This is the first chapter of a long research.

Kristina Sergeeva (1996) was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. She graduated from the Academy of Art and Documentary Photography «Fotografika» in 2019. Her artistic practice unfolds around black and white photography, photobooks and collages. Her research addresses topics such as post-Soviet space, personal and collective memory, and the visual perception of the environment and its impact on the individual. The goal of her projects is to expand the usual understanding of photography, to reveal her artistic statement through the visual interpretation of reality by focusing on the images, consistency and depth of photographs. Kristina is the founder and organizer of NIZINA FEST, works and teaches at the Fotografika Academy.