Born 1975, Ukraine
2001-2004 / Department of Photography
and Digital Media, Hadassah College,
Jerusalem
1997 / BA, Geography and Archaeology,
Haifa University

Inventing the Earth Under My Feet

 
The loss of familiar surroundings is usually perceived as a loss of self. We are
not the only ones who remember, objects also have memories. When they are
left behind, they take away a part of us, the part that is supposed to remind us
who we are.

You often begin to sense the mother culture in its absence. It comes to life
and haunts you, evoking phantom pains and recollections of distant realms.
The desire to bring back (or make up) gains inconceivable dimensions, as it
overpowers reality, sometimes to the point of its annihilation. This state is the
attraction to what is lost, to what does not exist.

The “self” of every individual is comprised of the past, present and future,
and their interconnections, which create a sense of history and continuation.
The shorter the memory, the less significant is the connection to the future, and
faith, which draws on past experience, fades away. Everything is reduced to the
here and now.

People who have yet to inherit profound traditions, devoid of property and
lacking horizons, are forced to start from zero. The tasks they face every single
day are not simple: choosing an identity without any real possibility to choose
as well as the need to connect the two poles. Thus, of all the possible feelings,
melancholy and alienation are natural, they are also bottomless.
In a way, the past is the shadow of the future. Without a firm ground, the
distance between childhood and adulthood is non existent, and instead of the
present the person lives the yearning for what he does not remember.