Julia Wimmerlin

Art Works

Ukrainian-born, Swiss-based visual artist Julia Wimmerlin has spent over a decade navigating the evolving landscape of photography, shifting from travel imagery to contemporary fine art and mixed media. After leaving her native Kyiv, she lived and worked across Europe and Asia — experiences that shaped her layered visual perspective and cross-cultural sensibility.

With academic degrees in Economics and Marketing, Julia began her career in international marketing, later transitioning to photography in 2014. Largely self-taught, she drew on her background in advertising to craft clear impactful visual stories.

The upheavals of the early 2020s profoundly altered her creative path. What began as an external gaze turned inward, catalyzing a transformation in both process and purpose. Her current work reflects this introspective turn: a search for meaning within uncertainty, and a commitment to investigating the self in relation to an unstable world. As her practice shifted toward contemporary fine art, she began to develop research-driven projects. Julia’s main research themes examine identity, perception, and the shifting nature of reality and memory.

This period marked not only a deepening of her conceptual inquiry but also a conscious redefinition of her visual language. Aesthetically, her images have evolved from vibrant, concrete scenes into symbolic compositions that hover between abstraction and figuration. Dream logic, ambiguous figuration, and the poetic use of color and light, become tools for exploring perception, memory, and consciousness. Whether capturing landscapes, human forms, or animal subjects, her images dissolve traditional boundaries creating a new personal universe—inviting viewers into liminal spaces where memory, emotion, and intuition converge.

Julia’s work reflects a deep interest in the postmodern deconstruction of “grand narratives” and the psychological terrain beneath surface appearances. Her photographs often function as portals: windows into the subconscious, where the fantastical blends with the intimate. Feminine, elusive, and emotionally charged, her visual language explores the metaphoric power of light, the fragility of identity, and the poetic potential of ambiguity. Despite photographing diverse subjects, her work remains cohesive.

Julia’s photographs have been published in various prestigious publications including New York Times, National Geographic, GEO, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Forbes and Le Figaro, amongst others. Her works have been exposed in Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ukraine and USA and are part of private collections in Spain, Switzerland and Germany.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2025

Solo exhibition, Galerie Calabrò, Zurich
Group exhibition “Disobedient images”, ProfiFoto Arles (OFF), Arles, France
Solo exhibition of “UNCORNERED” at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France

ImageNation, Amar Gallery, London, UK

2024

Group, Swiss Art Week, Galerie Calabrò, Zurich, Switzerland
Group, ”Restart», Prospekto Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
Group, ”Le Langage des Images», Festival OFF Arles, Arles, France
Group, «Contemporary UA Photography», NU ART Gallery, Kyiv, Ukraine
Solo, “Uncornered” series, Stadtbibliotek city library, Luzern, Switzerland

2023

Solo exhibition, “Uncornered”, Nidau, CH
Solo exhibition, “Uncornered», Kornhaus and Folks Hoch Schule, Bern, CH
Helsinki Photo Festival 2023 — Courage, “Uncornered», Helsinki, Finland
Rotterdam Photo- Freedom Redefined, ”Uncornered», Rotterdam, Netherlands
ImageNation, Soho Photo Gallery, NY, USA

2022

Tokyo International Foto Awards Winners’ Exhibition, Shibuya Center, Tokyo, Japan and House of Lucie, Budapest, Hungary
ImageNation, Galerie Joseph Le Palais, Paris, France

2021

International Photography Festival of Atout Sud “Regards de femmes », Rezé, France

2018 — Tokyo Midtown Design Touch, «Breathing life into things» expo Mazda-Vogue, Tokyo, Japan

2017 — International Photography Festival Pil’Ours, Pays de Saint Gilles Croix de Vie, France

AWARDS

2025

ProfiFoto New Talent Award 25/2
Encontramos de Imagen Book Dummy Award Honorable mention

2024

Fresh Eyes Talent ’24 Haute Photographie
3d place Cortona On The Move, “Stolen Language”
Winner Les Rencontres de la Photographie Marrakech, “Reverie”

Longlist artist for the Aesthetica Art Prize

2023

Tokyo International Photo Awards, Silver
Neutral Density Awards, Silver
Prix de la Photographie Paris, Gold and Bronze
The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts: Conceptual-Silver; Nature — Silver; People — Bronze