Ukrainan Art Festival. Pavlo Mazai – Essays

Pavlo Mazai is a Ukrainian artist whose work acts as a mirror, reflecting Ukraine’s culture, history, and present-day through diverse and emotionally resonant photography. Born, living, and working in Kyiv, Pavlo’s life—like the world around him—is fluid and constantly in motion. After thirteen years of a faultless career in customs, he chose the path of art. His passion for photography became his new vocation. Crossing boundaries is in his nature.

Mazai’s art exists at the intersection of life and death, beauty and brutality, movement and stillness. His exhibition is not merely a form of photographic self-expression but an existential inquiry that invites viewers into introspection. It reflects the fragility of life in the most literal sense through monochrome images, where color does not distract from the world’s rawness and impermanence.

Mazai draws inspiration from Michel de Montaigne’s philosophy: “To practice death is to practice freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.” His works embody the willingness to strip away the superfluous in pursuit of a pure, naked truth. Some photographs focus on the paradox of beauty and decay—how the world we find beautiful is always destined for destruction. In Mazai’s images, beauty and cruelty are interwoven until the boundary between them blurs.

This exhibition is far more than a collection of visually cohesive photographs. It is a poetic and existential journey that encourages viewers to reflect on the fragility of life. In the context of the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre, it expands the meaning of documentary photography—transforming it from a mirror of the world into a tool for exploring the human inner landscape.

The exhibition is part of the first-ever Ukrainian Art Festival in Estonia.