"VARIATIONS OF THE SCREAM"
Self-portrait series, 2025
How can we visualize a scream that never escapes the lips, one that resonates only inside the body? In this conceptual and deeply personal series of five experimental self-portraits, Oxana Guryanova explores the silent, internalized forms of emotional rupture. Drawing inspiration from Edvard Munch’s iconic painting The Scream, she translates its existential anxiety into a contemporary visual language, shaped by her own experiences of grief, fear, disintegration, and longing.
Created in the aftermath of personal collapse, the sudden loss of her father, the emotional toll of war, and a painful divorce, each portrait reflects a different state of inner tension. These are not theatrical expressions, but quiet visual echoes of a voice breaking inside.
Working with diverse photographic techniques, flatbed scanning, digital exposure with color processing, analog Polaroid, digital collage, and a black-and-white interpretation, Guryanova approaches the same inner scream from five distinct aesthetic and emotional angles. The result is a layered and intimate visual research: a study of what happens to the scream when it is trapped.
