SERI/GRAPH STUDIO
In February 2022, on the third day of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, artists Jenya Polosina and Anna Ivanenko began sketching what they saw around them and what they heard from loved ones. This marked the beginning of a series of documentary comics, most of which have since been published in international media outlets and compiled into several books and zines.
The comics format provides a grid—a structure within which traumatic material can be placed, contained, and held. It is also a way to traverse time and space, to blur the line between the outer and inner world. It allows the narrative to remain sequential and honest, while giving the freedom to speak metaphorically when words fall short. This makes comics an especially powerful medium for sharing complex experiences, including trauma.
The project Here and Tomorrow continues this artistic practice. In this body of work, the artists have shifted their storytelling approach from strictly documentary to autofiction—a genre that lies at the intersection of autobiography and imaginative fiction.
Here and Tomorrow is an exhibition branching out from a graphic novel currently in development. Viewers are invited to glimpse the process, to ‘open the book halfway through’ and read a few pages. The exhibition moves beyond the graphic page in an attempt to translate visual language into other media.
BIOGRAPHY
Seri/graph Studio is a creative duo formed by Jenya Polosina and Anna Ivanenko. The studio was founded in 2015 as a silkscreen printmaking workshop, producing prints and zines. Over time, the artists expanded their practice to include a range of collaborative projects, adding book design, comics, and exhibition work to their silkscreen-based approach. Books designed by Seri/graph Studio have received recognition and awards from competitions such as Best Book Design (2021, 2023), iJungle Awards, Nami Concours, White Ravens, among others. Individually, Jenya Polosina and Anna Ivanenko also develop their own illustration practices and collaborate with international media outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Die Zeit, The Economist, and Deutsche Welle. Since 2023, the artists have been working on Hedenite, a video game inspired by the city of Kyiv. Another important aspect of the studio’s work is their collaboration with various NGOs and charitable foundations on socially engaged projects.
The graphic novel project is supported by Documenting Ukraine, a project of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna.