MARKET (2024)
photo series
A shabby looking corner I found myself in
A slum in St. Petersburg
Apraksin Dvor, a market for the masses
I stealthily take out my camera
Time has frozen there
A place not like any other, trading from the heart
surveillance and security twenty-four-seven
Rats running around, the size of a corpse
bottomless pit
commercial claque
cauldron of worldly hustle and fuss
All these plastic bodies hint
at something
unpleasant
The life of the less fortunate
Artificial humans,
humans as if
thrown away
With their own profile, own face
For me they're almost dead
Becoming invisible
in this very place
the very way they are
And feeling very well
Short Description:
My grandmother lives in Russia, in the city called Yoskar-Ola of the Mari El Republic. She is soon to be 80 years old, lives alone and her short-term memory is slowly disappearing.
When the war started, something broke inside me. I didn't understand how I was supposed to feel about myself as an Estonian-Russian. I was longing for something that should not be part of me. It was the feeling of holes in the roots, the unknown side of my other family tree. I hadn’t seen my grandmother for 5 years and it was the longest time distance we have had. Usually she always came to visit us but this time I was the only one in the family who had the possibility to see her and maybe take her with me to Estonia.
On the 14th of August 2024 I crossed the Estonian-Russian border to start my journey to my grandmother's home. I travelled mostly by train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, from Moscow to Yoskar-Ola. Although everything was familiar there, I still felt like an alien.
