Generated Island

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and global isolation, traveling became a luxury inaccessible to most people. Ewa Doroszenko’s Generated Island series emerged as an artistic response to this suspended moment, when online travel remained the only safe form of exploring the world.

Forced to abandon physical journeys, the artist turned to digital technologies as tools for creating alternative spaces. She constructs island-simulacra—places that are both beautiful and unsettling, promising a paradisiacal escape while simultaneously exposing its impossibility. Trained as a painter and holding a Doctor of Fine Arts degree, Doroszenko consistently develops a post-photographic practice. Her working method combines digital image manipulation with the classical photographic medium and traditional painting.

In Generated Island, the artist draws on images from Google Street View, popular video games, travel guides, and other online sources to construct imaginary landscapes. The works are created through a multi-stage process: Doroszenko builds large-scale three-dimensional collages from fragments of photographic prints, then photographs them and further modifies the resulting views digitally.

Her painterly background is particularly evident in the series’ color palette. Saturated, almost tropical hues—intense blues, emerald greens, and warm golden tones—create an aesthetic closer to painting than to documentary photography. This heightened color scheme operates ambivalently: on one hand, it evokes idealized visions of paradise islands known from tourism advertising and popular culture; on the other, it emphasizes the artificial and simulated nature of the depicted landscapes. Ewa Doroszenko does not conceal this artificiality—on the contrary, she foregrounds it as a key element of the work. Her “islands” respond to a collective longing for idyllic scenery while revealing that contemporary perceptions of nature are inseparably linked to the screen.

The Generated Island series has been presented at several international events, including Kranj Foto Fest 2021 in Slovenia (where it received a distinction in the Isolation | Freedom competition) and the 18th Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) 2022 in Greece.