My grandfather Igor, who unfortunately I did not have a chance to see, was in Chernobyl in 1986 as an engineer and liquidator of the accident. After receiving large doses of radiation, he died of blood cancer, leaving my grandmother Mila alone in a one-room apartment quartet, which was received as a reward for my grandfather’s work. My grandmother, however, had two close friends Valya and Ira, who worked together with Mila and Igor in the same RosAtom Ministry and who also connected their fate to tragedy. In Chernobyl, Valya worked for three months as a secretary, Ira went with her husband only for a few weeks. All three women in the result received the status of "Chernobyl Widows", irreparable health consequences, painful memories.
The accident at the Chernobyl NPP is a disease that has poisoned entire generations. The people who lived through all this horror, who took part in the liquidation, who saw everything in real life, have been forgotten and abandoned like blunders in history. All experienced memories have been incorporated into their way of life, into their typical one-room apartments. This work explores the intersection of present and past, the indistinguishable consequences of the catastrophe and the permanence of the place.
The installation is an image of a typical Khrushchev apartment in which Ira, Mila and Valya still live. Each heroine has her own room, which represents her perceptions of the past and today.
My grandfather Igor, who unfortunately I did not have a chance to see, was in Chernobyl in 1986 as an engineer and liquidator of the accident. After receiving large doses of radiation, he died of blood cancer, leaving my grandmother Mila alone in a one-room apartment quartet, which was received as a reward for my grandfather’s work. My grandmother, however, had two close friends Valya and Ira, who worked together with Mila and Igor in the same RosAtom Ministry and who also connected their fate to tragedy. In Chernobyl, Valya worked for three months as a secretary, Ira went with her husband only for a few weeks. All three women in the result received the status of "Chernobyl Widows", irreparable health consequences, painful memories.
The accident at the Chernobyl NPP is a disease that has poisoned entire generations. The people who lived through all this horror, who took part in the liquidation, who saw everything in real life, have been forgotten and abandoned like blunders in history. All experienced memories have been incorporated into their way of life, into their typical one-room apartments. This work explores the intersection of present and past, the indistinguishable consequences of the catastrophe and the permanence of the place.
The installation is an image of a typical Khrushchev apartment in which Ira, Mila and Valya still live. Each heroine has her own room, which represents her perceptions of the past and today.
Mom, why do we need to cover our windows with these snowflakes?
installation, research
monotype and screen-print on bed sheets
2022
On February 24, 2022 when the war in Ukraine began it was important for me as an artist from Russia to speak out and observe the current catastrophe that destroyed the lives and dreams of people in two countries overnight and continues to destroy it now. For the first month, all social medias were overloaded with information about the war: from news and anti-war statements to personal footage from the center of events. I accidentally came across a video on TikTok where a girl in Ukraine was recording a video for her sister about how their family had cover the windows with tape crosswise to avoid damaging the glass from the blast wave. The girl called these tape crosses snowflakes, like those we all cut out of paper in our childhood and put on the windows during New-Year. Of all the material I saw online at the time, this video had the strongest emotional effect on me. Perhaps because I also have a sister whom I don't know when I will see, or the complete understanding that each of us has lost our childhood and the security of our own home.
