Likes. Headlines. Visibility. Today, influence is often measured by appearance and social media metrics. Yana Lande’s LIMELIGHT Vision offers a different perspective on women’s presence, one rooted not in public attention, but in substance and a legacy that extends far beyond the spotlight.
The project does not approach portraiture as a visual imprint. Instead, it asks what remains when the face begins to dissolve, and whether presence can become more powerful when the image is partially obscured.
Created at the intersection of photography, painting, material gesture, and cultural memory, LIMELIGHT Vision transforms photographic portraits into large-scale mixed-media works. Through layers of lime, light, pressure, and repetition, the women in the project enter a shared visual field. Their features are partly hidden, yet their gaze remains. The result is not a traditional portrait, but an encounter with energy, intelligence, and inner force.
Presented this June at Civic Hall NYC to a select audience of women leaders, the project sparked a conversation about visibility, presence, and the ways women shape the world beyond the spotlight.
The preview included a panel discussion with Ariane de Bonvoisin, former Time Warner executive, entrepreneur, and investor; Genevieve Piturro, founder of Pajama Program, TEDx speaker, and philanthropist; and Avalon Ashley Bellos, curator, writer, and cultural strategist.
Following the discussion, Victoria Zavyalova spoke with Yana Lande about the origins of the project, the role of lime as both material and metaphor, and her vision for LIMELIGHT Vision as a living cultural platform celebrating women whose ideas, leadership, and quiet influence leave a lasting mark on the world.
Victoria Zavyalova: Yana, thank you so much for bringing this project to life. When we first spoke about it and you shared the concept with me, it immediately felt very close to my heart. I have to ask: although this idea seems somehow to be in the air, nobody has created anything quite like this before. How did it come to you?
Yana: I think artists catch ideas from space — something that already exists, even if others do not see it yet. And then we give it a form.
LIMELIGHT grew from several things at once. I wanted to transform some of my older works because they no longer reflected who I am today. I was also looking for a way to bring photography and painting together, but not as decoration. I was looking for transformation.
Living in New York, in such a multicultural city, also made me think more globally. I wanted to find a visual language that could be understood anywhere.
So the idea came from my past, but also from looking toward the future.
Victoria: LIMELIGHT is both the name of your medium and the name of a larger project. How do you understand the distinction between the two?
Yana: LIMELIGHT is the name of my medium. It is the language I am developing through photography, lime, light, and painterly gesture.
LIMELIGHT Vision, on the other hand, is the name of this specific project.
It brings together women from different layers of our lives, and I hope, one day, women from all over the world. I do not see it as a project with a final number. Honestly, I would love to work on it all my life.
I cannot fully describe the happiness of meeting a new heroine and making her portrait. For me, that connection often remains forever. It has a deeply transformative power. It is not only an artwork. It becomes a human relationship.
The first chapter is being developed between New York and Miami, with future exhibitions, salons, conversations, publications, and public presentations. After that, I would love to create a book, and maybe even a film, something like Super Heroines of Our Time.
Not Catwoman. Real women. Real superheroines of our lives.
Victoria: You are deliberately not looking for public celebrities whose faces are already everywhere. Instead, you choose to feature women who are changing the world, often behind the scenes. Who are these women, and what kind of energy are you looking for?
Yana: In many ways, this project came from my own inner conflict: how can I be seen and heard without putting my face everywhere on social media?
I am interested in women who are deeply connected to what they do. Women who are connected to themselves — and because of that, they have the ability to help others.
This comes not from ego, and not from performance, but from a very deep inner source.
When they enter a room, there is suddenly more light. They ignite people. They ignite new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new desires to create and act. They shift people. They shift ideas. Sometimes very quietly.
And I have to say: I did not know how hard it would be to bring them to a photoshoot. They are used to spending their time on much more useful things.
Victoria: Can we talk about some of the women already featured in the project? Who are they, and what did participating in LIMELIGHT Vision mean to them?
Yana: Among the first women who helped shape the intellectual and visual foundation of LIMELIGHT Vision are French journalist Judith Benhamou-Huet, Ukrainian art curator Ekaterina Mikheytseva, and Miami-based collector Kathryn Mikesell.
They come from different cities, different cultures, and different professional worlds, but each of them carries a powerful presence.
Everything I wanted to say about these women is already in their eyes. For me, each of my heroines has an incredible depth of soul, a very strong professional mind, a clear vision, and a luminous intelligence.
When you stand under their gaze, something in reality begins to move.
Victoria: Your central material is lime. How did you approach the challenge of covering these women with lime while still keeping them recognizable? I personally know some of the women featured, and it is still remarkably easy to identify them.
Yana: The fact that you still recognize them — that is exactly the heart of the experiment.
How much of a person do we actually need in order to recognize her?
If you know someone, sometimes one small detail is enough. I am sure you have experienced someone’s presence without any physical contact. You simply feel that they are there.
And if you meet the portrait first, I am interested in the opposite question: how quickly would you recognize this woman later in a room full of people?
For me, the work is not about hiding the person. It is about seeing the person beyond the face.
Victoria: It is difficult not to develop a relationship with someone when you transform them into a work of art. Is it challenging to navigate that deep personal connection while simultaneously seeing them as an art object?
Yana: For me, every portrait is first of all an intimate meeting of souls.
I spend hours with the image. Looking. Covering. Revealing. Losing. Finding again.
Through this process, I often develop a deep sense of love. Not romantic love, but love as attention, care, and connection.
And I always hope that, in some way, the viewer can feel it too.
Something happens between us.
Victoria: Could you describe your creative process? Were there any particular pieces that presented unique challenges?
Yana: When I watch ballet and see a ballerina move so lightly, I think: I want to do that. It looks easy.
But making something look effortless takes years.
While the final image may look simple, I am still a professional. It took me thirty-five years in my own way to arrive at this simplicity.
If someone looks at it and thinks, “I could do that too” — or “my kids could do that too” — to me, that is the most dangerous compliment.
Behind that simplicity lies a long path. There is looking, failing, repeating, and deciding when to cover and when to stop. In LIMELIGHT, one wrong movement can destroy the face. But sometimes that loss is also where the real image appears.
The process is very physical, but also very quiet. It is almost like listening to the image until it tells me where it needs to go.
Victoria: Why did you choose lime as your primary material? It could have been almost anything else.
Yana: Lime carries many layers of meaning for me.
It protects. It preserves. It covers. It cleanses. It can hide something, but it can also save it.
Historically, lime was used to protect architectural surfaces and frescoes. And the word “limelight” itself comes from the glow of heated lime — from the original stage lighting of the 19th century.
So lime is both material and metaphor. It represents protection and visibility at the same time.
There is also something very important to me in the Ukrainian word for photograph — svitlyna. It means something born of light.
In LIMELIGHT, lime becomes the physical form of light. It absorbs the image, covers it, protects it, and transforms it into another state.
The women are not erased. Their features dissolve, but their presence becomes stronger.
Victoria: This may be a difficult question, but you came to New York after fleeing the war in Ukraine and faced many profound challenges along the way. How did you manage to preserve your inner light and continue your artistic practice through all of that?
Yana: Because I was supported by women.
I do not think I preserved my inner light alone. Women helped me.
There were moments when I did not know how to continue, and then another woman’s presence, kindness, intelligence, or strength gave me a way forward.
So for me, LIMELIGHT Vision is not only about creating beautiful portraits. It is also my deeply personal way to say thank you.
One woman’s presence can protect another woman’s light.
Victoria: Finally, what is your vision for LIMELIGHT? You have said that it is more than a portrait series — that it is an emerging cultural platform. What would you like it to become, and how do you see it evolving?
Yana: I want LIMELIGHT Vision to become a living cultural platform, a place where women can meet through art.
A dedicated space for exhibitions, salons, conversations, books, films, and the preservation of cultural memory.
I want it to grow through real human connection, in the light of love.
For me, this project is about women whose vision changes the world, and I want LIMELIGHT Vision to preserve that presence.
I want it to become a map of light created through art, so that in dark times anyone can look at these women and remember where to go.
