Maria Tkachenko
(⠀M a s h o o l y a a⠀)
Photographer & Visual Artist
I am drawn to the human being — fragile, contradictory, and endlessly shifting.
We create and destroy, breathe with the planet and quietly poison it, searching for light within emptiness.
My practice grows from silence, from trust in intuition and chance.
The self-portrait becomes a way to look at the human from within — through my own presence, through the body as a reflection of shared experience.
I am drawn to the unnoticed details of everyday life — trash bins, empty spaces, objects that quietly linger at the edges of perception.
I work with photography, generative methods, printmaking, and the book form — as extensions of the human gaze.
Publications:
2025 — Featured in MYTHOGRAPHY VOL.V — JUNO, VENUS, AND VESTA, official publication curated by Exhibit Around APS for Trieste Photo Days 2025 (Trieste, Italy).
2024 — Dito Piblishing, Moon, Rome, Italy
2024 — Uncommon.Images zine Changing Times, Ahmedabad, IN
Education:

2025 — Educational routes of the Projection platform, Photodepartment, St. Petersburg
2024 — Course in classic hand binding, Rare Book Academy, St. Petersburg.
2024 — School of modern photography Docdocdoc, post-documentary photography, St. Petersburg.
2023 — 2024 — Laboratory of project photography and creating photo books NIZINA, St. Petersburg.
2021 — 2022 — Museum internship at the VMII Mashkova, Volgograd.
Selected exhibitions:
2025 — Group exhibition “And I spoke with some houses”, Mayakovsky Library, St. Petersburg.
2025 — Group Exhibition CONTACTS AND CONNECTIONS, Rome city, Italy
2024 — PHOTOPLAY STREET AWARDS, honorable mentions category, Moskow.
2024 — Intensive and exhibition dedicated to the artist’s book: “Two-Volume Book”, BKC Nota.
2024 — Online Group Exhibition — “Image Within the Image”, Analog Forever Magazine.
2022 — “Everything will be fine”, Museum of Contemporary Art Art-Muse, St. Petersburg.2021 — PERS VLG Photo Exhibition “Russian street”, II Mashkov Museum of Fine Arts, Volgograd.
Other expieriens:
2024 — Participated in zine festivals: Ground-fest (Moscow), Razvorot (Voronezh), Gerdela (Rostov-on-Don), Stavropol, Nizina (Saint Petersburg).
2024 — Artist-talk as part of the festival, Mashkov Museum of Fine Arts, Volgograd.
2024 — PHOTOPLAY STREET AWARDS in the category HONORABLE MENTIONS, Moskow.