ABOUT

Malanka is Ukrainian American visual artist, Yelena Yemchuk's sixth photobook. Like all bodies of work by Yemchuk, Malanka is personal, feminine, surrealist, and touched by a spell. The eponymous tradition is a pre-christian, heavily incantatory folklore ritual that takes place on January 14, the Old New Year in the Julian calendar. It is celebrated by ethnic Romanians in western Ukraine, and its origins are largerly unknown.

Yemchuk traveled to Crasna (Krasnoilsk in Ukrainian) in 2019 and 2020 to document the night-long festival. In essence, Malanka is about driving out winter and stimulating spring into existence, an ancient custom reminiscent of Persephone's return in Greek mythology. Through Yemchuk's gaze, places and spaces organically and dramatically blur, creating dreamscapes in which her subjects experience some form of metamorphosis. Malanka includes a poetic essay by Romanian cultural journalist Ioana Pelehatǎi.