THE WITNESSES 

(2023 — in progress)

installation (wood, plywood, plaster, cyanotype, video)

The installation Witnesses, made from fragile, inexpensive materials, addresses the memory of the victims of mass political repression in the USSR. As an artist born and raised in Russia, and as a bearer of an inherited experience of memory, I approach this subject through my own embodied engagement and through the performative process of creating the installation.

The work relates to one of the sites of mass executions — the forest tract of Sandarmokh in the Medvezhyegorsky District of the Republic of Karelia, where more than 6,241 people were executed and buried during the Great Terror. Over the course of several years, I bring to this site objects of varying scale, made of plywood and filler (ranging from 30 × 40 cm to 75 × 190 cm).

Using the cyanotype process, I produce works in which the impressions of fallen branches collected at the site gradually emerge. These branches, which grew in the place of tragedy, become symbols of regeneration and serve as a form of remembrance for each person who perished. Thanks to a light-sensitive iron-and-salt solution, it is possible to create images in a range of blue tones. These images possess a capacity for regeneration: after fading through prolonged exposure to light, they return to their original state in darkness — much like the shifting nature of memory itself.

Through the position of a non-witness, I reconsider memory through embodied practice and ritual — not as a repetition of trauma, but as an act of acceptance and reconfiguration of the collective wounds that have shaped my identity. The installation becomes a non-monumental memorial, while its performative and durational process of making forms an integral part of the work. 

The project will be completed when all 6,241 branches have been recorded, each serving as a trace of remembrance for an individual life lost.