Join us online with Sara Ickow, ICP’s Associate Director of Exhibitions and photographer Oksana Parafeniuk for a discussion based on Parafeniuk’s project War Threads, on view in ICP’s free first floor Incubator Space through August 19, 2025.
About the ICP Incubator Space
ICP’s Incubator Space is a new flexible program centered around showing the work of emerging photographers who are responding in real time to the world around us. ICP will present a rotating selection of projects in our ground floor project space by an imagemaker experimenting and pushing boundaries in the documentary tradition. ICP’s Incubator Space is located on the ground floor in the ICP cafe. The space is free and open to the public during cafe and museum hours.
About War Threads
Photojournalist Oksana Parafeniuk was six months pregnant when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. In the three years since, she and her husband, also a photojournalist, have lived with their toddler son in Kyiv, a city heavily impacted by the war. They continue to document the war for global news outlets, creating a vital historical record. Bringing together documentary images with family archive and embroidered images, this presentation tells the story of how one photographer is impacted as a journalist, a mother, and a citizen during a moment of turmoil for her country.
Much of Parafeniuk’s documentary work from this period highlights Ukrainian women and post-invasion, stories that are often overlooked in the dominant media narratives. The resulting images tell a nuanced story and are presented here in dialogue with family photographs of life under the invasion, as well as works from a series experimenting with embroidery on some of these images. The series, titled War Threads, uses camouflage-colored threads to pierce paper as a metaphor for how Russian influence has penetrated every aspect of daily life in Ukraine. Through these interventions, the artist references the constant interruptions of air raid sirens, blackouts, and explosions, underscoring how family memories are forever altered by war.
About the Speakers
Oksana Parafeniuk (she/her) is an independent photographer based in Kyiv, Ukraine, where she is exploring the manifestations of human resilience and dignity among people facing hardships.
In addition to her personal projects, Oksana has worked with and published her work in The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, NBC News, Libération and many others. She took part in multiple group exhibitions in Ukraine, as well as in Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United States and other countries. She is a member of Women Photograph and The Journal Collective.
Sara Ickow is the Associate Direcotor of Exhibitions and Collections at the International Center of Photography and manages exhibitions and special projects for Women Photograph. Previously, she worked as a curatorial assistant and collections manager with the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. She holds an MA in art history from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.
© Oksana Parafeniuk, from the series War Threads, 2024
