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.
Years
installation, research, serious
drypoint, acrylic paint and fabrics
2020-2021
I started with the analysis of "inner home": a place where we live in our imagination, in dreams, or where we dream to exist. Our past is located in some other world, after all, we already doubt whether we lived i.e. space and time are imbued with irreality. The poetic image that emerges is not an echo of the past, but rather the opposite: the present gives voice to the past. Being at a great distance from my homeland as well as from my family, I would like to analyze this experience and convey it in future installations, exploring my belonging, my sense of comfort, and the influence of an unfamiliar environment on my "inner home". At the same time, I was wondering about the experience of exploring Sigmund Freud's "Screen Memory" and that feeling of dread while reading. It was a fear that everything I remember might be invented, that my memories are my grotesque or they are not mine at all. It drove me to explore objects or places that had come a long way with me, starting from my childhood. Their reality is a kind of proof for me, an affirmation of my memories and the attachment of myself to spaces from the past.
To this reflection, several works have been done so far. In the artwork "Years" I decided to take as a basis a part of the wall from the apartment where I grew up until I was 6 years old. On this part of the wall, my parents and my grandmother marked my growth, once a year or more. When I started looking at this object, I was interested in how the earliest marks had already almost disappeared from the surface, leaving behind only indentations. This process of disappearance I tried to convey in my work, while at the same time paying attention to my own personal fear of oblivion in another piece, "Years 2". By imprinting myself in the vanishing effect, I wanted to discuss the idea that the "I" emerges through the capacities of our memory, that we "inextricably" remember all our experiences that make the personality form, and make humans different from other living beings.
Years
drypoint on primed fabrics
2020
Years #2
drypoint on primed fabrics
2020
Spoon
1 x 3 m
drypoint on primed fabrics
2021
Bicycle
2 x 2,5 m
drypoint on primed fabrics
2021
Watermelon Seed
1 x 3 m
drypoint on primed fabrics
2021
Photo
2 x 2,5 m
drypoint on primed fabrics
2021
Installation Years
in Winzavod, Moscow (during Winzavod.Open)
2021