Ur-Presence. From the "Ur-Presence" Miniseries

Yuliia Holub is a Ukrainian artist working with memory, trauma, and presence in her practice.

The artist works within contemporary conceptual art, creating a synthesis between abstraction and surrealism. The artwork of Yuliia Holub has been presented at numerous solo and group exhibitions in Ukraine and abroad.

Born in 2002, the artist studied Easel Painting at Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Academy of Decorative-Applied Arts and Design (2019-2023). Later, in 2023-2024, Yuliia pursued a Master’s Program in Monumental Painting at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture. 

Since 2022, Yuliia Holub’s paintings and graphic works have been showcased in numerous exhibitions, including “Tee Taidetta - Älä Sotaa” at Jyväskylä City Central Library in Jyväskylä (2022), “Art of the Young” at Lviv Palace of Arts in Lviv (2023), “The Time of Pre-Assigned Events” at Modern City Hub in Zaporizhzhia (2025), “Another Nearby” at Korsaks’ Museum in Lutsk (2025), “Nahirna. Wspólnota” at Ukrainian House in Warsaw (2026), among others. 

In 2023 and again in 2025, the artist was awarded the Presidential Scholarship of Ukraine for Young Artists.

In 2025, one of Yuliia Holub’s works was included in the archival collection of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Kyiv.

The artist’s works carry philosophical and esoteric undertones, yet are grounded solely in an exploration of subjectivity. Yuliia Holub’s original paintings include works from the “Impossibility Of Self” series, the “Ur-Presence” miniseries, the “Complex Empathy” miniseries, the "Postal Memory" series, and many more. 

Holub’s works from the "Postal Memory" series were created during the exile, when Yuliia was in Finland as a refugee. She used envelopes found at a flea market as her canvases. They are carriers of time, fragments of other people’s stories, broken-off letters that never arrived.

The “Impossibility Of Self” series approaches the mirror not as a means of self-knowledge, but as a structure of distortion and substitution. The reflection does not return the gaze; it replaces it, dissolving the boundary between the real and the simulated and leaving only traces of presence. The figure remains suspended — not a center, but a fragile threshold between reality and its projection.

Yuliia Holub’s miniseries “Ur-presence” reflects the threat that emerges not from action, but from existence itself. Authoritarian systems read difference as danger even before resistance appears: the mere presence of the “other” already unsettles structures of control. This exposes a deeper paradox — while fascism fears otherness, contemporary politics often overlooks nature as an equally significant force. Ecology unsettles the traditional triad of socialism, liberalism, and fascism, reminding us that humanity is not the center of the universe but merely a fragment within a wider, precarious yet beautiful, balance.

Yuliia’s artistic practice begins with bodily experience. She works with memory, trauma, and presence through posthumanist surrealism. Rejecting the idea of reincarnation, the artist focuses on what remains — the traces that experience leaves in the body.

Notably, Yuliia Holub does not illustrate concepts, she responds to lived states. Each work starts in the body, passes through the image, and culminates in reflection. She perceives death not as transcendence, but as a filter through which meaning is sharpened.