Margo Ovcharenko’s project “With Feathers” draws its title from Emily Dickinson's poem "'Hope' is the thing with feathers," evoking the fragility associated with survival and resilience. This body of work combines photographs and text to explore themes of war, displacement, and the search for hope amidst turmoil. The images are presented in austere black or metallic frames, drawing on conceptual photography that emphasize the factual and indexical even when the work is deeply diaristic and personal. This formal approach frames the experience in a way that feels almost scientific and detached, allowing viewers to process the visual information methodically. The emotional resonance unfolds as the accompanying text interacts with the images, revealing layers of meaning at the viewer’s own pace.
Symbolic imagery of flightless birds—specifically ostriches—is central to the project’s visual language. Encountered during moments of personal crisis, these birds provided emotional support to the artist during her mental health struggles. The metaphor of the ostrich aligns with contemporary photography’s use of allegory to convey complex emotional states, embodying vulnerability, containment, and resilience.
The project’s political dimension is rooted in a place called “Mezhyhirya Park”, a site that has become a museum displaying the riches and corruption of a former Ukrainian president. Ovcharenko’s last visit to this location before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine introduces a critical dialogue between her personal experience and political commentary, resonating with contemporary photography’s interrogation of power structures and its capacity to evoke collective memory. Once a symbol of opulence within a corrupt regime, the ostrich now reflects the entrapment and destruction endured by civilians under the weight of war—a visual metaphor for the psychological toll of displacement.
By situating “With Feathers” within contemporary art theory—particularly photography’s dual role as a personal and political document—the project examines how visual narratives bear witness to trauma and serve as a means of processing it. This work contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of images in mediating personal experience, shaping communal identity, and preserving historical memory.
Margo Ovcharenko’s With Feathers uses photography and text to recount the artist's personal experience with war and displacement. Flightless birds symbolize fragility and survival juxtaposed with personal and political memory in her text.
Symbolic imagery of flightless birds—specifically ostriches—is central to the project’s visual language. Encountered during moments of personal crisis, these birds provided emotional support to the artist during her mental health struggles. The metaphor of the ostrich aligns with contemporary photography’s use of allegory to convey complex emotional states, embodying vulnerability, containment, and resilience.
The project’s political dimension is rooted in a place called “Mezhyhirya Park”, a site that has become a museum displaying the riches and corruption of a former Ukrainian president. Ovcharenko’s last visit to this location before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine introduces a critical dialogue between her personal experience and political commentary, resonating with contemporary photography’s interrogation of power structures and its capacity to evoke collective memory. Once a symbol of opulence within a corrupt regime, the ostrich now reflects the entrapment and destruction endured by civilians under the weight of war—a visual metaphor for the psychological toll of displacement.
By situating “With Feathers” within contemporary art theory—particularly photography’s dual role as a personal and political document—the project examines how visual narratives bear witness to trauma and serve as a means of processing it. This work contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of images in mediating personal experience, shaping communal identity, and preserving historical memory.
Margo Ovcharenko’s With Feathers uses photography and text to recount the artist's personal experience with war and displacement. Flightless birds symbolize fragility and survival juxtaposed with personal and political memory in her text.
Overtime, 2021
Ovcharenko’s depiction of powerful women feels rooted in the radical visual language of early Soviet photography—as does her use of sport as a metaphor for community.
Lesley Martin
The series "Overtime" portrays a community of a women's soccer team based in Moscow’s suburbs from 2018 to 2021. It must be understood that neither the place nor this particular women's football team were chosen by me blindly, but because they reflect Russian right-wing ideology. This government-funded club is one of the top ones in the country, and many of these women competed for Russia abroad.
The biggest draw for me was to show how queer women can represent a country that is openly anti-gay, anti-liberal, and thus overwhelmingly anti-feminist. And the answer is that they can’t. They make minimum vage and their games are rarely visited by someone outside of their family and friends’ circle.
It is well known that women’s team sports often are queer-friendly because they allow women to express masculinity, and it is no exception in this case, with many portraits depicting young love and queer sexual identity. However, the team is bound by the authoritarian rules enforced by the Moscow Department of Sport, complicating the situation.
In 2018 when I only just began taking these pictures, I talked to a woman whose portrait you now see if she’s ever voted. She told me that during elections, the entire team is taken by the club's bus to the voting station and instructed on who to vote for. She emphasized they weren't required to provide proof with pictures from inside the voting booth. So, instead of voting for Putin in the presidential election, she chose her candidate herself, unlike many of her teammates. Even though these women are demonized for their sexuality and their career, they often choose not to revolt even in the smallest, but to stay hidden.
The turning point for me in taking sports as something reflecting national ideology was reading Susan Sontag’s "Fascinating Fascism," where she argues that Nazi art does not show body imperfections and strain. “Fascist art displays a utopian aesthetics -- that of physical perfection,” she says, so I show traumas football players suffer. “In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art, Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community. The erotic (that is, women) is always present as a temptation, with the most admirable response being a heroic repression of the sexual impulse,” she says, so I show to you women who are complex. They are sexy in a non-heteronormative way, not reduced to a mere perfect body, but express themselves through tattoos and strong gazes. With these photographs, I wanted to fight Russia’s propagandist image of a woman that is straight, petite, and complaisant. But it was always my choice, and only partly theirs. Players depicted in these photographs live in fear of being outed. The same woman I mentioned earlier told me how when she was 16, the national team coach called her parents and outed her, causing her great distress. The same coach, for years, withheld money, policed the team’s living quarters, and monitored their phones for “illegal” activities, including alcohol consumption and lesbian relationships.
My photographs reflect their predicament by falling short in revolt, too. The series reflects the limited freedom the players are allowed. The outside mirrors my inner feelings, with non-human photographs capturing a sense of impending doom. Fireworks come dangerously close to suburban housing projects, black smoke engulfs the field, and a torn and mended net is set against dark clouds. This is the world that stays hidden with its new generation of unseen queer women in Moscow, and they can only be awakened from within, not by some magic prince’s kiss.
The biggest draw for me was to show how queer women can represent a country that is openly anti-gay, anti-liberal, and thus overwhelmingly anti-feminist. And the answer is that they can’t. They make minimum vage and their games are rarely visited by someone outside of their family and friends’ circle.
It is well known that women’s team sports often are queer-friendly because they allow women to express masculinity, and it is no exception in this case, with many portraits depicting young love and queer sexual identity. However, the team is bound by the authoritarian rules enforced by the Moscow Department of Sport, complicating the situation.
In 2018 when I only just began taking these pictures, I talked to a woman whose portrait you now see if she’s ever voted. She told me that during elections, the entire team is taken by the club's bus to the voting station and instructed on who to vote for. She emphasized they weren't required to provide proof with pictures from inside the voting booth. So, instead of voting for Putin in the presidential election, she chose her candidate herself, unlike many of her teammates. Even though these women are demonized for their sexuality and their career, they often choose not to revolt even in the smallest, but to stay hidden.
The turning point for me in taking sports as something reflecting national ideology was reading Susan Sontag’s "Fascinating Fascism," where she argues that Nazi art does not show body imperfections and strain. “Fascist art displays a utopian aesthetics -- that of physical perfection,” she says, so I show traumas football players suffer. “In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art, Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community. The erotic (that is, women) is always present as a temptation, with the most admirable response being a heroic repression of the sexual impulse,” she says, so I show to you women who are complex. They are sexy in a non-heteronormative way, not reduced to a mere perfect body, but express themselves through tattoos and strong gazes. With these photographs, I wanted to fight Russia’s propagandist image of a woman that is straight, petite, and complaisant. But it was always my choice, and only partly theirs. Players depicted in these photographs live in fear of being outed. The same woman I mentioned earlier told me how when she was 16, the national team coach called her parents and outed her, causing her great distress. The same coach, for years, withheld money, policed the team’s living quarters, and monitored their phones for “illegal” activities, including alcohol consumption and lesbian relationships.
My photographs reflect their predicament by falling short in revolt, too. The series reflects the limited freedom the players are allowed. The outside mirrors my inner feelings, with non-human photographs capturing a sense of impending doom. Fireworks come dangerously close to suburban housing projects, black smoke engulfs the field, and a torn and mended net is set against dark clouds. This is the world that stays hidden with its new generation of unseen queer women in Moscow, and they can only be awakened from within, not by some magic prince’s kiss.
Margo Ovcharenko
Country of Women, 2017
In Country of Women series she photographs queer women in the Eastern bloc. Margo has reached local LGBTQ+ media and communities by putting open calls for female identified queers and photographed whoever came forward in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Margo addresses the lack of cultural memory available for queer women in post-soviet world. Having been overshadowed by heterosexual mainstream, queerness - and especially female one - in the former USSR, always remained a current event with no history, with little to no visual legacy. Margo approaches this issue with an attempt to bring what could be this legacy upon modern-day queer portrait. Her main tool is a subversion through posing, derivative of a soviet-era female body representation, with sport-related imaging being the most direct inspiration. The idea of physical tension under intangible circumstances - as in both competition and oppression - is a backbone for the whole series as well as some of Margo’s earlier works. Her childhood background in gymnastics first led to her project called Furious Like a Child, dealing with an issue of forced exposure of the female body in sports. This time she uses a somewhat reversed approach - inherently sexualized subject of queerness is shown through supposedly asexual posing and overall aesthetics reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda. This way the visual identity of female queerness leans toward powerfulness, yet remains in the realm of attractiveness with the latter being a most potent device for female empowerment in Margo’s work.
Margo addresses the lack of cultural memory available for queer women in post-soviet world. Having been overshadowed by heterosexual mainstream, queerness - and especially female one - in the former USSR, always remained a current event with no history, with little to no visual legacy. Margo approaches this issue with an attempt to bring what could be this legacy upon modern-day queer portrait. Her main tool is a subversion through posing, derivative of a soviet-era female body representation, with sport-related imaging being the most direct inspiration. The idea of physical tension under intangible circumstances - as in both competition and oppression - is a backbone for the whole series as well as some of Margo’s earlier works. Her childhood background in gymnastics first led to her project called Furious Like a Child, dealing with an issue of forced exposure of the female body in sports. This time she uses a somewhat reversed approach - inherently sexualized subject of queerness is shown through supposedly asexual posing and overall aesthetics reminiscent of Soviet-era propaganda. This way the visual identity of female queerness leans toward powerfulness, yet remains in the realm of attractiveness with the latter being a most potent device for female empowerment in Margo’s work.
The Ebb, 2022
The Ebb is series of photographsthat invites the viewer to visit abandoned Chisinau fountains and experience the drought both actual and metaphorical. It’s a collaborative work which consists of Margo Ovcharenko’s photographs and the interviews and collages presented by Temirtas Iskakov. This body of work is an ode to the city which has troubled soviet past and deals with current issues of water scarcity. Chisinau moves forward by letting soviet relics fall into decay and no longer facilitates the facade of abundance which communist ideology had provided, developing the new narratives in its place. But in doing it slowly the city allows this process to be grasped in images and texts. This passage of time is also visible in stories from Chisinau residents in which traditions change and the new ones take place