Dusha (2016 – ongoing)

'Dusha' (Russian word for 'soul') is a long-term project that I'm shooting with my mother. We're building a multi-level bridge together, including the going into the space of her creative origin – bizarre, fascinating. My mom is a rare woman with her own unconquerable romanticism and heightened sensitivity of perception. For many years, she has been suffering from depression and the inability to express herself. She had to start insulin therapy, something she was afraid of since being a little girl, watching how diabetes took away first her grandmother and then mother. Because of diabetes, my mum started to have vision problems: "I can't see anything at all with my right eye. If I just look at the bright sun, then a muddy point of light comes out with eclipse in the middle if I concentrate, but that's it. With my left one I look as if through a film, I see a worm-vessel and many round black dots that move around in the eye fluid." As if looking in a mirror, I myself struggle with the insulin resistance; there is a fear of a predetermined scenario of development, unspokenness and painful vulnerability. By bringing out feelings of powerlessness and injustice, the process itself has become a realization for both of us against emotional self-alienation and sensory deprivation. On some photographs, you see my mum's right eye that is almost devoid of sensitivity to light. It was important for me to understand and try to feel it. I’ve engineered lens attachment by hand. So, I saw almost nothing in the viewfinder except for a very weak and dim beam of light in the twilight, where you can literally get into focus only upon instinct. Dissecting veil of ambiguity, abstraction drew into the nature of outlined imageries, highlighted by bare sincerity.