“But it’s hard to stay sane here, in the shadows. It eats away at
you, knowing the walls have ears, that the windows have eyes.”
– Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
you, knowing the walls have ears, that the windows have eyes.”
– Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Raised in a family where women were taught to remain hidden, suppress self-expression, and conform to societal expectations, I was unaware of how these constraints shaped my life until adulthood. My parents and grandparents lived through communism, a regime that permeated every facet of life, enforcing conformity and silencing individuality. These inherited traits and historical burdens became the backdrop of my internal struggles.
The post-communist transition left scars on the society outside and within the spirit of the house where I grew up. This project emerges from those early memories, where showing any part of myself, my thoughts, my voice, my expression, felt risky. In those times, I learned to hide, to stay quiet, and to protect myself from a world that often felt unpredictable. Far from being a sanctuary, the house reflected an inner conflict: a place of shelter, silence, control, and fear. Its walls carried the weight of an era; within them, a monster grew, a presence nurtured by the tension and mistrust of those times.
Central to this project is the concept of memory, which shapes identity while being inherently fragmented and subjective. Through photography, I approached memory as an active process, embracing its distortions and omissions. Self-staging became a ritual, a performative exploration of my past.
Childhood objects, from curtains to dried flowers, played a crucial role in shaping the visual language of this project. The mirror in my bedroom, once a source of self-scrutiny, evolved into a portal for self-exploration. Curtains that had once shrouded the room in privacy became a symbol of concealment and revelation.
Though I have lived far from that place for years, its essence clings to me. It manifests in the ways I approach the world, in patterns that replay themselves endlessly, looping back to old fears and defenses. Even now, the spirit of that house and the shadows of that era remain with me. The loop persists, urging me to confront what lingers in the corners of my identity, a reminder that the past is never truly past.