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.
Interiors
installation, research
2021
The "Interiors" project is a photographic documentation of a spontaneous exhibition in a house under demolition. The exhibition was created in one week and brought together 16 artists from three art independent institutions: the ICA, the Rodchenko School and British School of Art. Home in our experience of perception exists inseparably from cultural constructions, means to us little more than a physical building. It is a place that compresses the world to commensurate limits, becomes part of our bodily experience and the assembly point of our identity.Each artist worked on the interior by drawing on personal experience through the prism of the of the collective.
The residents had to move out of this house because a crack had formed under the building due to the construction of the metro station, and the house is due to be demolished in 2023. Each artist was given a room in the abandoned building in which he/she could create an installation or a series of works using the resources they found. For me personally, this story connects very strongly with the practice of not being safe in a house, the sudden distress people are facing. It felt like people were fleeing the place as there were so many personal belongings left behind. I used the sheets I found in the room and decided to make a print of the window and door so that there would be something left of the building after it was completely destroyed.
Window and Door
Monotype with oil on found bedsheets
Samovar and video footage
The installation was left in the building and will be destroyed along with the building.
