The Exiles / 2024

Multi-exposure digital photography Digital prints on transparent film

The Russian world collapsed. Artists, photographers, musicians, and writers scattered to different countries and cities. Just like a hundred years ago, after the bloody revolution in October 1917. Those who did not accept the war, censorship and dictatorship of the special services. Those who decided that freedom and honesty are more important, have left and do not want to return. It's excruciating, no matter how independent these Russians try to look. They have nowhere to go. Just yesterday, successful and confident, they travel the world in search of a home. They don't find anything. Foreign cities, foreign languages, foreign rules. They are foreign everywhere. The exiles.

This is Not Your Home / 2024

Digital photography
Digital prints

In this project I analyze the feelings of an expat through architecture and natural motifs. With the help of my photographs, I want to talk about the inner experiences of a person, cut off from their native people and places, about a difficult path and an ongoing encounter with longing for what was lost. This work encourages the viewer to think about the meaning of home, homeland, roots and identity. It confronts us with important questions about how external circumstances can influence our internal experiences, especially when it comes to emigration. When I left Russia, the border guard told me that this was no longer my home. These words seemed to cut the thread connecting me with my native land. Since then, I have forever lost that warm feeling that lived in me.

Connected Personalities / 2024

Knitting, weaving Threads, wire, acrylic

What unites people who have been forced to emigrate? Loss of internal identity, pressure from society, fears, conflicts with oneself, attempts to fit into new realities. The interaction of light and shadow in this work echoes Carl Gustav Jung's concept of the shadow "self," emphasizing internal conflict and suppressed aspects of identity that surface during emigration. These shadows – the unseen – are what unite most emigrants.

Russian Silent Longing / 2022-2023

Digital photography
Digital prints

The project ‘Russian Silent Longing’ is about deep disappointment without the slightest hope for healing. About pain, about powerlessness and silence, about fear and love, about life and death, about cycles. Russian longing as both the eternal and the temporary. Russia is my unhappy love. Culture beyond time and beyond space. The search for a new life. The search for a new form. We will continue to keep the light in us. We will carry it in our hearts through the dark times, despite our hearts sunk in tears and blood.

Where the Wind is Getting Stronger / 2023

Mixed media

Scanning the shore with my eyes in search of the right combinations. "There's an unusual strip here," a pocket pulls away. Finding solace in each peculiar swirl, and with each new fragment nearing, I move forward, with a gnawing need underneath it all to change everything. The roar of the surf. Salt settling. In my nose, in my eyes, on my fingers. And on my feet too. And thousands like me. Like us.

Spiral / 2023

Mixed media
Digital prints

Thing which I’ve only faced in books was war. It always seemed far away, impossible to happen again. It began in the morning and time froze from that day. Sense of belonging to this terror forced me run away and I left the country, but I kept falling in thoughts: “How could it possibly happen? Why peaceful life felt apart under greediness of power and anger?” Drowning in the news headlines I’ve experienced each death over and over again as my own. I stuck in the wheel of samsara, trying to find answers maybe not even exist. Events are cyclical, but for me it’s not a circle. History goes in a spiral, moving forward, allowing the same mistakes. Death is difficult to remained overlooked, but life takes its place all the time. Are we against or the part of it? And can we prevent war?