Loss

EDITION

2022, Winner

school

Royal Academy of Art,
The Hague, Netherlands

First I lost my home. It happened in 2014 when Russia occupied Luhansk - my hometown. I was no longer able to come back freely to the place I belong. Back then I still thought everything will be over soon. Slowly my parents learned to recite Russian propaganda. Then I lost for the second time — my desire to talk to them. My sister was a buffer between me and them for a while before she had to run away from missiles and also left Luhansk. She became a refugee in Ukraine, living in a refugee camp near Kyiv. She passed away from cancer soon after that. I lost her. In 2022 I read the news about war every day. Many times.One day I read that the bomb landed in the field next to the village my sister lived. That field was a cemetery where she was buried. It seems I lost a chance to visit her grave. This war has created a sequence of losses and all years since then I have been searching for an answer to why is this all happening to us? Is it all because we have been left without any clear identity, offsprings of big Soviet «new human» utopia, abandoned without Bible or Marks? My family represents those to whom Russia’s propaganda addresses now, and such an indistinct nature became a fruitful stage for warmongering. I had never really thought about identity issues. Maybe, I did not even know who am I until I started to lose everything that defined me. The war is taking everything from me, I am desperately trying to keep what little has left. My trauma was never been spoken out. This work is my attempt to tell about loss and not be forgotten.