Homesick

  installation 

I am a foreigner in a new country, and a stranger in my homeland.

 This project is a corner of a room belonging to a person who left his homeland. The installation itself resembles a birch tree with wide, swinging branches, which are made of ropes of torn Soviet fabric and bedsheets. When visitors enter this space — a cloud of memories formed by the tree’s branches — they encounter the tree itself, constructed from cardboard, fabric and discarded materials. A red corner, a traditional element of Russian huts, hangs on the tree. There you see a collection of all the things that are most important to a person’s heart, reminding him of simpler times — things from the past that have survived for some unknown reason, souvenirs. They lie mixed with new things from a new life, from a country to which a person cannot get used. We can also notice elements of homemade icons, embroidered fabric. In this context, religious symbols act as the most vivid intuitive way of connecting with one’s genetic code, roots and history. 

______________ 

This installation is a work with memory. A certain cultural code created by a person who began to forget both the good and the bad. The unstable structure gives a feeling of the inconstancy of memory, the fragility of memories and the uncertainty that you will be able to return and just as naively love your homeland again after so many years. A quiet question: am I the same person who happily left many years ago? Longing for home or is it still a bright color of memory?

 Now, I’m a foreigner everywhere