Known as the Graduate Award, these new purchases are suggested by a panel of former award winners, all recent graduates, who use their lived experience and professional practice to choose works from a selection of courses at CSM. In this story, MA Performance graduate, Maria Proshkovska, talks about her experience of being a former award winner and now a panellist.
Born in 1986 in Kyiv, Ukraine, Proshkovska now lives and works in East Anglia, UK with her son due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Although she graduated from the MA Performance course this year, the Museum purchased her first-year project, Farina, in 2024. Farina is a solo 5-hour performance, during which Proshkovska made flour from Ukrainian grain that was burned by Russian missiles. It was curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Giulia Pezzoli and took place in Italy's Museo D'Arte Moderna di Bologna on 17 September 2023.
As a socially engaged, feminist, conceptual artist, Proshkovska’s work focuses on trauma, memory and social issues. Here, she speaks about her previous experience of winning the award and how she has approached nominating new projects from the BA/MA Fine Art, BA/MA Performance, and BA Culture, Criticism, and Curation courses for the Graduate Award 2025.
"It was an exciting surprise to receive an email about the Graduate Award and the offer to purchase my work for the CSM Museum & Study collection. That very day, I bought tickets for myself and my son to visit my husband in Ukraine, who had stayed in the country during the war. As you may know, during a full-scale war, the skies over a conflict zone are closed to civil aviation, so every trip becomes a real adventure.
For me, this award was very special because of the challenges I faced when trying to balance life, work, and war. I also never expected to receive the award while I was still a student. That is what makes it of such profound value to me: this recognition not only gave me confidence, but also a deep sense of responsibility to continue my practice.
Farina was not my first work to be included in a collection: some of them are already held in institutional and private collections in Italy, Taiwan, Japan, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Ukraine. However, this performance is of exceptional importance to me, and its inclusion in the CSM Museum & Study Collection underscores the power of performance both as a testimony and catalyst for an ongoing dialogue about the deep social, political and psychological consequences of war. What is most gratifying is that this multifaceted story will live on not only in the collection, but also in the memory of future generations of students.
It was an honour to join the panel this year, and I plunged into this process with pure joy, curiosity, and responsibility. The process of reviewing the work was deeply valuable and inspiring and helped me step away from my routine. It provided insights into how young artists from different backgrounds see the world and find their place in it.
I ground my own practice in sincerity, corporeality, and conceptuality, and these are the qualities I look for in the work of others, too. The idea of community is central to most of my projects, and I strive to create new ones through socially engaged art. I appreciate the inclusive approach of the CSM Museum & Study Collection and the trust they had in us as jury members to choose both with our brain and heart.
I would especially like to highlight the projects of Bhawana Jain and Paula Dischinger. Jain’s Floating in the Well is a circular drawing installation that reclaims a childhood memory of floating in water, layering grief and grace through charcoal, sound, and movement in a meditation on ecology, memory, and healing. Meanwhile, Dischinger’s Herdentier is a walking performance that shifts between individual and collective movement, asking what it means to follow, to lead, or to belong within a group without a central authority. Both radically different yet equally strong, they impressed me with the depth of the concept but also a sense of incredible lightness. Their projects also generate ideas for further research, which is extremely important for collecting and stimulating the learning process.
The greatest beauty of art is the impossibility of measuring its impact in a pragmatic way. I want to encourage future graduates to give your audience and panellists the keys to understanding your work – don't hide behind it. The artist's life and personality are an integral part of artistic practice. They form a holistic perception of you as the person that makes art and the art you made as a person (or collective).
Returning to Kyiv from London, carrying all the thoughts and experiences I gained while being a panellist, I find myself writing this text as the air alarm goes off once again. Yet, even in this moment, I sincerely believe that one day, the war will be nothing more than a painful memory – a chapter for reflection, not a living reality.
I wish for everyone to never lose hope – in this world, in art, and in themselves as talented artists and loving human beings."
Maria was one of 4 recent graduates who made up this year’s selection panel for the Graduate Award. The other panellists and the courses they covered are Funmi Olawuyi, BA Ceramics, BA Product Design, MA Industrial Design, FAD, MA Applied Imagination, MA Innovation Management; Tong Yin, Fashion and Textile Design pathways, MA Textile Futures, MA Regenerative Design; Makila Nsika Architecture pathways, MA Furniture, Jewellery, Ceramics, MA Biodesign, BA Jewellery Design, and MA Narrative Environments; Vidya Premraj, Graphic Communication Design programmes, MA Communicating Complexity, and MA Animation.
The works by all Graduate Award 2025 winners are available to view digitally now on the special collection created for the UAL Graduate Showcase.