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 largely 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. While photographing in Crasna Yemchuk also made a
companion short film which premiered during her solo exhibition at the Ukrainian Museum in New
York in 2023. The film stars Ukrainian artist Anya Domashyna and the American actor Ebon
Moss-Bachrach. Yemchuk who was born in Kyiv and emigrated to the US when she was eleven years
old always invigorates her works with a particular notion of the in-between meaning that she
gently and joyfully plays on the ridge between fiction and reality between the grand beauty of
1960s cinema and the social and built environments of post-soviet realms between her Eastern
European heritage and her daily life in New York. 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
Pelehatai.
