Wet Ground

Wet Ground is a long-term body of work by British-Iranian artist Aria Shahrokhshahi, developed through repeated stays living and volunteering in Ukraine since 2019. Made from inside the war rather than in response to it, Shahrokhshahi’s activist approach rejects spectacle in favour of proximity, focusing on the rhythms, contradictions and fragile continuities of daily life shaped by prolonged violence and uncertainty.

Shot in stark black and white, Shahrokhshahi moves beyond the visual shorthand of war imagery to present scenes that are often inscrutable, absurd, domestic, performative or oblique. A recurring focus on youth and subculture, finding ways to survive and thrive, reflects the radical and improvised paths life in Ukraine takes in the present moment. Wet Ground lingers in the spaces around conflict, where threat, loss and anticipation shape the daily existence of a generation of young Ukrainian men and women, even as they continue to carve out moments of resistance, rebellion and joy.

The book’s title links Shahrokhshahi's survival of a rocket strike while assisting in a medical evacuation of civilians from a frontline town, where wet ground prevented the detonation of a missile, to the unstable terrain of a country undergoing rapid and violent transformation, in which safety and danger exist in close proximity, and the ground itself feels unreliable. Developed alongside Shahrokhshahi’s ongoing humanitarian work in Ukraine and extending the fundraising efforts of his previous publications and exhibitions, Wet Ground is accompanied by his immersive documentary While We Heal, as well as his ongoing sculptural and installation-based works from Ukraine, forming an embodied account of a country resisting erasure while life continues under pressure.