The installation "Memories" projects a video with sunrise at sea onto ten concrete sculptures and back wall, creating an imagined view of urban landscape at dawn. The work reflects on three cities I have lived in and hold in my memory as homes.
The first is a meditation on war in Ukraine, a country where I lived from age 20 to 23. The installation serves as a bridge between memory of the beautiful sea, cityscape, and houses, and the present reality where the beautiful sunrise remains while life in Odessa has changed radically as well as the city, which was destroyed by Russia.
The second recalls my hometown of Yekaterinburg, Russia—a place where beauty and nature exists primarily in memory and imagination within a city built of concrete.
The third represents Tel Aviv, where beautiful sunsets occur nightly, viewed through old buildings that appear ready to collapse—not from war, but from lack of urban planning and inflated real estate prices.
Through the interplay of projected video and concrete forms, the installation explores how memory transforms lived experience, creating landscapes that exist simultaneously in physical space and recollection. The concrete sculptures embody the urban reality of these three cities, while the projected sunrise suggests the persistent beauty that memory preserves, even as the places themselves undergo transformation or destruction.
The work also speaks to the universality of human memory—the city is a collection of universal shells, of concrete cubes, while sunrise and sea remain captivating and meditative regardless of one's cultural origin. These elemental experiences transcend geographical and cultural boundaries, suggesting that certain aspects of beauty and longing are fundamentally shared across all human experience.
