WET GROUND

Aria Shahrokhshahi

Wet Ground is a long-term project that documents the historical transformation of Ukraine. Shot from a place of compassion and dedication to social mobility, Aria’s images seek to acknowledge the complexity that exists within a country experiencing violence, where normalcy is still embedded in everyday life.

Exploring this duality, Wet Ground appropriates militaristic sources that exist to dehumanise and destroy in order to tell the stories of the individuals experiencing collective traumatic events. Departing from the standard visual vocabulary of war, his visual narrative combines documentary photography with sculptures built from the destruction of the war and audiovisual elements created using live minefield maps connected to MIDI samplers.

Through a series of black and white images that explore the tension between destruction and resilience where life takes place in a cycle of loss and repair, this documentation focuses on the vast transformation of social dynamics, the evolving concept of masculinity and the struggle to preserve the memory of a nation that is under attack, resulting in photographs that are balanced but charged with a raw energy, containing both forces.

The title Wet Ground refers to the unstable equilibrium of the past and the present, the destructive and the creative. It's not possible to build upon wet ground, but rebuilding is imperative to survival.