Mychajlo Deneka is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently finishing his Bachelors in Fine Art for Photography and Related Media at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Deneka’s work was recently on view at The Museum at FIT in the group show This Must be the Place. He has assisted shoots working with Billy Porter and photographer Duane Michals. 

Making photographs that depict the sacred dynamic of pleasure and pain is my driving force as an artist. Often through religious symbolism and human sexuality, I explore these dynamics and the complexity within them. I find it liberating to explore and combine elements like homoeroticism and catholic iconography, two things that may not commonly live together through my work. Through this I am able to enforce the complex dynamics of pleasure and pain. Using archival printing processes, both in a traditional darkroom and digital lab I create archival prints designed to withhold the test of time.