Mother/Land

/translation from russian/
when i was 14 I realised i was gay
i was afraid of accepting myself and went through several depressions
i started to persuade myself that i am a mistake
i was suffering a lot, and i told my grandmother about it
my grandfather was at work at the time
she started to shout at me, like, how dare i say that to her, how on earth i became like that
it was painfull to listen to and i ran away, was wandering empty streets and thinking about her words over and over again
when i got cold in the evening i went back home
when i entered the flat my grandfather started to shout at me, and then he started to beat me up, while my grandmother was standing there and watching him doing that
after he finished, he spat at me
he said
you are nothing
you don’t have any right to live in this house

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Video installation, that consists of 6 boxes; in each box there is a video (or audio) inside. A viewer is required to look inside one box at a time.
The work is based on e-mails posted on facebook page called 'Children-404', that was created as a response to anti-homosexual law that was accepted in Russia. The 'anti homosexual propaganda law' makes teenagers, who are exploring their sexuality, invisible. In my project I wanted to look at those children who were betrayed by everything they have, - family and a country. Family and country - Mother+Land, - that is what child's life consists of. The country, 'the land', betrays a child by making them invisible, and family, 'mother', betrays by rejecting them. This makes a child vanish. By this project i wanted to explore the notion of betrayal of a child, - and even though this work is predominantely based on LGBT theme, I guess there is still a 'room' in it to apply to any kind of rejection, that becomes one of the most traumatic experiences in child's life.
Originally, this work was meant to be shown in Moscow in December 2014, but the gallery rejected the project 2 weeks before the opening due to the LGBT theme, so technically the work didn't pass the cencorship.

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Comments 1

Marieke Kruger
9 years ago
Beautiful images!

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