THE YOUTH COUNCIL AND LITLAB TEENS 2025/2026
Teenagers aged 15 to 17 worked on the collective photo exhibition Through the Prism. The project highlights the process of identity formation in adolescence through a unique perception of reality and the prism of one’s own experience. It shows how the same events acquire different meanings through personal experiences.
There is a state that is hard to describe in one word: you are no longer a child, but not yet the person you will become. This is a time of difficult questions and first experiences, after each of which you emerge different. Growing up, we are influenced by numerous factors and random events, on the basis of which each person forms their own experience, that becomes the foundation for shaping their worldview, the so-called prism through which s/he perceives further life. Through the prism of personal experiences, everyone sees differently: the same event evokes completely different feelings.
The prism does not create colors—it disperses them, and what seemed to be one is revealed in the multiplicity, where each ray follows its own path.
Whereas a photograph is a trace of light reflected from a moment that will never be repeated. In this sense, photography becomes an experience: it does not describe it, but preserves it.
These photographs are an attempt to show the world from the perspective of the teenagers of the LitLab and the Youth Council of the Mystetskyi Arsenal. We strive to highlight the value of everyday moments in which our self is shaped, because it is the incompleteness of the teenage gaze in which its greatest honesty lies.
The photographs exist as independent images, but by putting on headphones, you will hear audio recordings accompanying the works, that will allow you to immerse yourself more deeply in the moment and learn the story behind the image.
Each photograph is a separate memory, but together they form a common picture. We invite you to look through the prism of our experience—to see how the same light refracts differently in each of them.
The Youth Council and the LitLab Teens are projects of the Mystetskyi Arsenal for creative and active youth, who throughout the year join various exhibition and educational projects, create and implement their own ideas, and actively work on teen programs of Book Arsenal and the festival for kids and teens—Arsenal of Ideas.