VaiAlTuoPaese

 

My birthplace was Saratov, a small Russian provincial town situated on the Volga River. Because of its underdevelopment, the city gained notoriety and frequently appears on Russian comedic television programs as a prime example of an apocalyptic location.

I arrived in the US 17 years ago with no money, no job, and undocumented. Later I found myselfI so consumed by the fantasy of a relationship with the UK; I was convinced it would be my happily ever after. My feelings towards London changed repeatedly throughout my time there.

But now I’ve become an Italian citizen. Eleven years of my life have been spent here. 

Although Russian is my mother tongue, English is the language spoken by my children and me. Despite fluency in three languages and competence in several more, my dysgraphia leads to frequent harsh criticism of my writing. I often notice that instead of understanding my point, people zero in on my mistakes. In general, though, I feel positive about using English.

I’ve been an immigrant for half my life, yet I remain baffled by the ever-changing rules and social dynamics of each new country. It can be gender games, sexual games, babysitter games, good doctor/bad artist games, language games, outfit games, political games. 

Billions inhabit the world, yet the claim that nobody eats at 6 pm persists.

Fuck!I am lost again! I do not understand the rules! I just feel that I am not enough and I have lost a sense of where do I belong!

 

Have you not? Are you sure?

What do you feel?

An Atlas of Belonging in Limbo.

part 1.

The first part of the project contemplates a world in unsettling transition. Sunlight persists, yet the air hangs heavy, and the vibrant tapestry of birdsong frays into silence. Our connections – once familiar – strain and transform... A profound rift widens in the shared ground beneath us, mirroring a society hardening, its empathy thinning. We sense a collective stumble, a gnawing absence where compassion resided. The imperative to move, to migrate from this fractured point, remains urgent. Yet, a stark quiet descends, visions grow shadowed by a gathering, unsettling presence... 

 

 

What do you feel?

On Humanity and Life in female body.

Part 2.

My work remains an attempt to reconcile the sacred and the earthly through body, desire, and image – exploring how our fantasies become visual rituals. Yet, for this exploration of migration’s unseen layers, I chose the figure of the woman as a lens. Not because her oppression is simple – often, it’s the most visibly documented façade of a far deeper structure – but because her very body becomes a contested territory in the geography of global inequality, a mirror reflecting the unspoken hierarchies that drive movement.

Womanhood, defined and redefined across borders, embodies the stark disparities that make migration not merely an escape from war, disaster, or poverty, but a navigation through profound, often invisible, global fault lines. In one country, she is property; in another, a bearer of specific, conditional rights; elsewhere, perhaps a symbol of contested modernity. This patchwork of existence reveals the deep, normalized inequality in which we all live. Migration exposes this: a woman fleeing not bombs, but the suffocation of being seen only as womb, or property, or an economic unit with capped potential.

Once labeled a feminist, the term felt like another border – constricting, demanding allegiance to a specific wave or doctrine. I read Simone de Beauvoir, seeking a homeland within the idea. ‘What is a woman?’ she asked, and the question echoed hollowly. For me, a migrant from rigid definitions, woman was never more or less: just human. A human capable of being anything: fragile, exploited, manipulated, unshielded – precisely the vulnerabilities magnified tenfold when she crosses borders, carrying the weight of compounded expectations and systemic invisibility. Her journey underscores that migration’s roots snake deep into the fertile soil of inequality – the very soil we tread daily, often unaware of its shifting, treacherous nature beneath the surface of normalcy.