PROJECTS

TO MY HOMETOWN, UFA 2007-2026

the boiling point when I was 12 and felt soo deeply hurt and unloved by my parents I almost decided to run away. I browsed my wardrobe at night, secretly from my parents, - I tried to calculate how many layers of clothes I will need to survive at night in minus 30 and what are those modest tasks I can do humbly to earn living while still being committed to be useful.

the fencing class I was not allowed to attend because I was a girl, colourful pictures taken of me as a kid against the soviet monuments. how much I wanted to see the fireworks celebrating the victory day - I doubt it was a mere flashy yearly display that captivated me. the story of my great grand-dad, zealous communist, a maths teacher in the labour colony for outcasts, who fought against fascism, suffered many concussion, was so profoundly linked to how I perceived the holiday. when I was 6, I recall severely cutting my leg while running and I didn’t see the fireworks. when I look at that scar, deep resentment is still gnawing at my heart.

I remember the long stretches of wet tramway routes and their forking crossroads, mostly sorrowful books I borrowed from the school library. the mishmash of smells in the communal kitchen of the share houses - pickles, samogon, fried potatoes, and public baths in the summer months when the water supply was limited. picking up the glass bottles & jars to get little change for that ice cream in a wafer cup.

I believe that you are bound to comprehend the place you were born and raised it through distance. separation creates longing. time sharpens it. it is such a dreary feeling it makes your chest ache more and more, especially if you are unable to visit it due the political martyrdom the evil flaunted, yet the place is still and forever in your heart. and it lives in the photographs you took - they are now like the only anchorages for those splintered memories your persona is build upon.

there is no other city in the world like Ufa, Өфө, the city over the ‘White’ river, technically a peninsula, standing on that boundary line dividing Europe and Asia, and I remember it even so brightly through the distinct settings & episodes - they are the ephemeral scenes in a movie that only exists in my memory, will it ever be realised?

I remember that wide boulevard Prospect Oktyabrya, the longest in the city, neatly planned, the grid of the trees shadowing the sides, you believed it stretches right to the edge of horizon. the fumes of the chemical plants and the pipes rising above the haze. thickets of greenery bordering the city perimeter, after which - allotments. my relatives were among a few who had one.

I remember freezing on that bus stop one evening in January, it was minus 20, harsh wind and navy blue sky, the new year celebration had already passed, but the decorations are still there. adults with the eyes saddened by quiet hopelessness. it starts to snow. there is not enough space for everyone under the shed. chunky snowflakes make the. finally, after, perhaps, half an hour, a bendybus arrives.

dark, bitter frosty mornings before the school and the queues to get milk and bread for the exchange of vouchers because even the basic provisions were rationed. I did not question the discipline, no matter its harshness, and I treasured dearly the simplicity of freedoms in their sincerity - finish all the homework, take my dog out, fall in a snowdrift and sense the ice crystals tickling the face.

that afternoon in April when it finally smells of spring, the sun bursting forth in brilliant beams, islands of snow start melting, and I want to run out in the unbuttoned jacket that I had already outgrown it. a certain sensation takes captive of the familiar streets - what was exactly that burning sentiment, how to render its vastness & dizziness?

an echo of a distinctive voice in the pedestrian subway and a dark-haired girl with a guitar singing ‘Kino’ songs.

I took these photographs 20 years ago.

the first day of school in 1991 when USSR just collapsed, sword lilies half of your height in your hand. how much I stood out in a class photo wearing my perfectly ironed uniform that was a rare specimen of imported goods. murky, ashy grey clouds hanged low in the September sky, the treetops rustled sadly - it was both a sad and a hopeful day. my mother told me that I will be kicked out into orphanage unless I only bring the good marks. was it due to the artificially instigated fear, or as a result of my own willpower and contesting spirit, or both that I forced myself to become an overachiever? Incidentally, my primary school teacher said that I will go far.

the apple and plum trees I climbed to steal the fruits, the long strings of outdoor garages by the back of the kindergarten I never went to. the music school I only entered once - to submit my application - but the next day my mother withdraw it. she failed to let my curiosity for music to develop claiming that I have not talent. that is the wound I am still healing - through many undertakings, my life is entangled in music.

that first audio cassette I bought in 1996 with the little money I saved and the dreamworlds and love stories I started fantasising about. looking at the passers-by, I tried to read emotions in their eyes. songs became the playground for my imagination and I was seeking every opportunity to pair them with the setting of my hometown.

THE PERSIMMON'S FRUIT, 2012-2020

the threshold of desire,

I see the abyss reflected in your chartreuse eyes

as if for the first time…

a gesture overflown with grace,

into impermanence

it drifts away

the shell cracks open the brilliant moon

nothing but passing trains

perhaps it slips around the corner

devoid of volume and shape

the skyscrapers mirroring the heat, so ardently

it touches the skin, in that vast light -

becoming the shadow of the self, anew again

quietness aloud, a mute rupture,

refracted in the polished steel

at the gateway to a blind street

to be torn aside by a puzzle of sensation

as the twilight skies casting its electric blue

faint traces escorting into dizziness

freeways into the melting cityscapes

lanterns are lit, competing with the moonlight

flickering rainbows on the eyelashes,

misaligned international zones -

there is another dimension of tenderness

securing the distances, or, surrendering to

faraway and so close, transient and eternal,

the sunset gives a long kiss

the diamonds of tears in the whirling sea

a humble outline of the emotion yet to fade

electromagnetic noise shatters the haze,

caught by the suspended traffic lights

the glances ricochet in the car’s back seat

the script of a movie to never be filmed

the dissonance, an opening

punctuate the space, interrupting and redirecting sightline

perceived through flesh, an imprint of a cloud,

capricious and alien, the settlements of peace

forever expectation, it stays afloat

vagabonds speed arrows leaps swords

rapture highways distortions voids flowers

flames records frost wires currents

thunder foxes red balloons air signals

the sound of my footsteps on the gravel

echoing and multiplying someone’s heartbeat,

is it fragility behind the solidness of concrete,

the vapour of the unspoken dreams

the silhouettes of the forbidden emotions,

all the strangers I wish I could have talked to,

insomniac ramblings, measured by the shutter clicks,

and the infinite wonder beyond one’s grasp

through the gloaming we glimpse the brightest of eyes,

which gaze upon life, and its slow catastrophe

it still retains a certain wrongness

what draws you in - is what slips away

activity that continues outside the frame.

love is the only hope and pain is the only feeling

as far as mutual intoxication might take us

like a twist of animated string

sliding into that mystically nauseating area in between

small anchors in the whirl of transmitted waves, reverie, and saxophone solos

the countless hours spent in transit, ungrounded, in the forbidden meta-zones catapulted on the summits of emotional rapture by guitar chords or by hazy surroundings, it's all too luminal and pervasive, too chaotic and unfamiliar, and the vast expanse of my jet-lagged mental plane inhabited and divided by the vague shadows of you mixed with the recollections of those odd brief encounters, locating the silhouette amongst the noisy crowd, where the voices of my friends are resonating like the water-distorted echoes coming from afar, the masks of inaccessibility, backfiring questions, the shrinking space and the wrapped time, leaving the doubts out has never been easier, turning the knob up to the voltage peak...

ISOLAR, 2010-2021

the desert devoid of any coordinates, where the warmth of daylight is as imaginary as the apparitions of the future. there’s only the dust that reflects the cold silver, with the commanding irreverence, and the zillions laser beams rise like the microscopic insects, scoffing down the ground, reducing everything to the blanched vacuum. the intensification of the uncontrollable forces, and then the abrupt blackout… in the futile attempt to disregard the well remembered nauseating smells, peeling mask after mask, half-slaughtered by imagination, holding breath past any endurance, but there’s a phantom always present at the corner of my eye. no forecasts for avalanches available, only the burning gut instinct. the hazardous drift towards the fractured horizon which resembles the shimmering ocean, the brief stopovers to gamble with and bruise some on the way, with ever-increasing ease, the only in order to crank up your own pain immunity, while being terminally committed to the others - to annihilate that immunity again. the falling and the counter-attack in their inexplicable, absolute bondage. the nocturnal blue above, motionless and hypnotising, and the silver under your feet, it might start crumbling again, any second

SANCTIFIED, 2024-2025

FIGMENTS, 2020-2021

the landmarks of temporary meanings, intimate yet somewhat alien stories – fragmentary and unsettled, spurred by abruptness, by the moments which remain oscillating on the periphery, and only occasionally touching the verge of the sight – dropping ambiguous hints, half-revealing the evasive beauty, and disappearing into the darkness, again and again, restless and incomplete. there is much more in the in-between spaces, in gaps and in pauses, when the shutter fails to be released, when the unsettling silence takes over the dissonant sounds. a sudden flicker of the light reverberates with the power comparable to those of an earthquake; a cryptic pattern on the ice disorientates and pulls the trigger off - till the surface breaks. transition splits any permanence, the act of concentrated seeing confronts the stillness of a frame.