Artist's statement:

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Occupation. I am looking through the window of my kitchen, which is situated on the second floor, right above the trash can. Good thing happened, garbage men came to take out the trash, which was not taken out for so long, that a landfill formed around it. They took only what was inside the container. I watch my husband collecting the garbage lying around and throwing it into the can. It is now full once again, and the garbage truck left, with no indication if it’s going to return. I’m about to give birth. The stench is awful.

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The view from the window of the place we live now is on the forest. There is no garbage here, it is processed and burned. People wash the garbage containers here, the trash bins are fenced off with neat fences (for aesthetic purposes, probably), there are a lot of them in the forest, in parks, everywhere. It’s clean here, and if there is garbage left on the streets, it is probably left from people visiting, and it is collected every morning by the communal services.

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A month before the war. I’m asking my friend to order me a white dress with ruffles. I never had a dress with ruffles. I have hormones due to pregnancy, and I am imagining a picture of me having a walk with a baby carriage wearing a ruffled dress. The dress arrived two days before the war. My friend left Kherson in the first day of invasion and forgot to take the package from the car, so she was driving it around different countries before she settled down. She sent me the dress just a month ago. The dress contrasts with my other clothes I wear for almost two years, which are mostly black. My dream picture (of me walking around Kherson wearing that dress) went down the garbage bin filled with my unrealized perceptions of myself.

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I have a lot of questions for the people among who we are living now. I want to know how visible we are, if they notice us. I want to see us with their eyes. I want to know if I’m garbage here, in a foreign land, among people with different upbringing and mentality. Because locals used to live here without us - without people who left their homes and found their shelter here, because of some catastrophes. The locals still remember, how it is: to know only the faces of those who were here before, knowing that their upbringing does not allow to throw trash in the streets, to hear only native language around. To what degree do they perceive us as something superfluous, unwelcome, strange, alien.

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I’m learning their language, to be able to ask them.  

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