The sudden forced emigration wrenched me from calm and comfortable life of a middle-aged architect into the one of an exile in a new land. Everything is upended here, and my task now is to navigate unfamiliar terrain and somehow find my place in this new world.
Amid all of this, I began constructing a private, fairy-tale world hidden from prying eyes, which only my two daughters have access to. The world where the boundaries of possibility dissolve, the feminine fantasyland sprung from the bedtime tales mothers weave for their children. Yet, this world is steeped in a profound sense of homesickness.
We don’t craft elaborate plots. We simply step into this world—up in the attic of our rented home—and take a photograph, a moment suspended in time, before slipping back out.
In our fantasyland, nothing is permanent. Everything shifts, transforms. Mother and daughters blending into each other and different characters, caught in a constant state of transformation. There is no fixed point, only the shimmering transitions between them. And no end here, even a happy one.
My work is about searching for identity in the first years of unexpected and unwanted emigration, about creating a fairy-tale (and hopefully safe) imaginary world for my children, especially vulnerable in a foreign environment. About preserving sanity through creativity, imagination, and family collaboration. About supporting one another within the family.
Creating this project is my way of coping with the despondency and fear that come with emigration. It’s also a way to play with my daughters and to leave them with good memories of the time we spent together during this difficult period for our family.
