Personal Projects
At the age of 13, after another scandal at home, I packed my things and moved house to my aunt Zina.
Since then, her house has become mine. In those days, she worked as a photographer at a theater and often took me to performances. Over time, I began to take her camera and take pictures of my friends, myself and surroundings.
In April 2018, when I was already 23 years old, Zina suddenly began to cough. These days, she was preparing to go to the South of France for a vacation and bought a new camera, to play with, while walking along the sea coast. A week later, she received the results of an examination of her body, which concluded that she had stage four lung cancer.
The trip was postponed forever.
This project is based on my relationship with my aunt Zina, who was a photographer herself, and the period when Zina became ill.
Through experiencing the death of a loved one, I have had to grow up and learn my identity in the context of my life story, the time in which I live and raise the issue of family inheritance.
One of the most common philosophical questions about man’s relationship with body and spirit gains depth when it concerns us personally. After all, man is dependent on the limitations of his body. But despite this, man wants to achieve something more than just the animal continuation of the species and reproduction.
A distinctive human have a necessity to spiritualise human life, to translate it into the plane of the immortal, beyond the cycles of life and death. This abstraction idea is vital to maintain the meaning of one’s existence. Whether we like it or not, each of us creates our own heroic way of avoiding death.
This project tells the story of the unique ability of human beings to recognise their mortality and the mechanisms of the psyche in constructing a worldview that overcomes this fact, through cultural symbols and psychological superstructures.
I use the metaphor of blossoming, comparing human life to the process of realizing one's potential in a limited amount of time.
Back in 1995, my parents, a generation of post-Soviet society, were extremely passionate about esoteric movements. Mama decided to give birth of me and my sister Sofia at home, in the bath tap. Somehow Sofia overtook me and decided to be the first to be born ahead of me for 20 minutes and took the status of an elder. This fact that un- doubtedly influenced her character.
We were not separatble until we were six years old and father left the family. Around this time, I started to want to separate myself from Sofia. I didn’t want to have a person who looks and behaves like me - no more. Children’s friendship gave way to a struggle for parental attention and fostered an atmosphere of competition.
After 10 years of breaking up, at the age of 23, life brought us together again. It wasn’t easy. My desire to love her was rejected under the pressure of past experiences.
Facing the difficulties of an imperfect childhood, I tell the story of our relationships at different stages of our lives through self-portraits and situations. With this project I want to reveal the real truth about the relationships that are possible between female twin sisters beyond the banal representations of popular culture.