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.
My Trees
2024 - present
TFT displays, video loop.
My Trees project is an installation consisting of a network of circular micro-displays, representing a new stage in Serafima Bresler's exploration of archives and their interaction in her artistic practice. The branches of the tree consist of displays of the round electronic watches, emphasizing the cyclical nature of events and the act of observation through a lens reminiscent of a door peephole. The project changes its form depending on the conceptual focus and exhibition space, but invariably centers on themes of invisibility, cyclicality, and the disappearance of archival materials.
The installation contrasts two types of video content: personal archives documenting everyday life and publicly available footage of disasters. This juxtaposition demonstrates the problem of the invisibility of disasters and their normalization in everyday life, as well as the declining role of archives in preserving information to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies.
For example, one important theme is the Chernobyl disaster, which Serafima works with throughout the practice. By blending the personal archive of a family that was affected by the disaster with the historical archive of the 20th century and what is happening now during the war of Ukraine (the occupation and attack of Chernobyl), a tense interaction between personal and collective memory is created, revealing the repetitiveness of historical disasters.
My Trees project has taken different forms, depending on the concept and the space, but they all demonstrate the same idea of working with invisibility, cyclicality, and the disappearance of archival information about disasters.
Project has been presented in installations and exhibitions such as:
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1.09.04 (HFBK Annual Project, Hamburg, 2024)
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I wish I could hide (HFBK Graduation Exhibition, Hamburg, 2024)
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Boon or Bane? (Mom Art Space, Hamburg, 2024)
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Drifting between pictures of the mind (Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, 2024)
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MANIFEST:IO (The Symposium for New Media and Electronic Art in Berlin, 2025).
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NORDWESTKUNST 2025 (Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, 2025)
I wish I could hide
HFBK, Graduation show
The project presents how knowledge become a reason for the migration. The combination of original and found video creates an effect of entangling reality and personal experience, blurring the boundaries between intimate and public, personal and global. The installation becomes not only a visual object, but also a space for reflection on memory, perception and the nature of digital archives.
All the documentation of the project you are welcome to see here.
All the videos were taken by ordinary people on cameras or phones, whether it was the artist's family archive itself or found footage of civilians from the scene in the public domain.
All videos were chosen as evidence of the Russian government's culpability in such crimes as: the Beslan terrorist attack, the Nord-Ost terrorist attack, the first and second Chechen war, the war in Georgia, the war in Ukraine, the murder of journalist Politkovskaya, opposition leaders Nemtsov and Navalny, the continuing concealment of the facts about Chernobyl and its occupation in 2022. All these cases are still under investigation, a lot of data is lost or ignored by the authorities and the public.
Photos by Tim Albrecht
Boon or Bane?
Exhibition in MOM Art Space, Hamburg
2024
TFT displays, video loop.
The issue of security is one of the fundamental topics in the current political debate. Security is shaped by different forms of control, including bureaucratic structures, information management, and the shaping of desires.Security is a fundamental human requirement. However, there comes a critical juncture where the emphasis on security leads to prioritizing it over human rights. At that point, the question is whether we are willing to accept restrictions or take calculated risks.
Archival footage of the terrorist attack in Beslan, September 1, 2004 was shown. You can read more below in the 1.09.04.
1.09.04 / Endless September 1, 2004.
installation in HFBK, Annual Exhibition
2024
TFT displays, video loop (archive, documentary footage), burned wood.
On September 1, 2004, at the beginning of the school year, a terrorist attack took place at School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia, taking more than 1,100 hostages. On the third day of the attack, three explosions occurred and a fire broke out, resulting in the partial collapse of the building. 333 hostages died, 186 of them children. The official version says that the explosion was caused by terrorists, but the investigation showed that the school was shelled by two groups of the Russian FSB using flamethrower. The evidence that the hostages died because of the law enforcement assault was in chemical samples from the used flamethrower in wooden beams. Samples were not handed over to the investigation and presumably the evidence was destroyed. The investigation is still open.
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The project received the DAAD-Preis 2024 award.
Drifting between pictures of the mind
Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin
2024
TFT displays, video loop.
The artists of “Drifting between pictures of the mind” in 2024 or their families come from countries such as: Taiwan, India, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, Romania, Poland, the FRG (formerly East and West), Austria, Italy, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Mexico. The topics addressed in their work relate, among other things, to the context of their life experiences or those of their families, to autobiographical events. They critically examine a colonial legacy, they talk about sexual identity, about violence and the brutality of life, about emigration and displacement, about the image of women in postcolonial societies, about the aestheticization of human life and the resulting influence on culture and nature, of power constructs within families, they question social structures, they ask questions about belonging, origin, gender, as well as the role of art in society.
Presentation of the I wish I could hide project, but in a new space.
MANIFEST:IO
The Symposium for New Media and Electronic Art in Berlin
2025
TFT displays, video loop.
The entire "Trees" project was designed, created and is the property of Serafima Bresler.
Special thank to Ulf Freyhoff for the technical support and teaching how to solder.
