Kristina Kretova-Dazhd'

Untitled

Russia

Collage, 2023.
Mixed media.

Memory is the most crucial part of a person. What is a person without memory? Just a set of reflexes, narratives, lifeless schemes. Black nothingness sets itself off against white light akin to memory that opposes itself to oblivion.

Daria Khoreva

I Don’t Know These People

Georgia

Necklace, 2024.
Brass, silver, photographs.

I do not know my father, and he does not know about my existence. Exactly half of my lineage and roots are hidden from me from the very start.

I am fascinated by stories of families knowing their ancestors several generations back. Of all my relatives, I only reliably know my mother and grandmother.

I have always been curious about why I have so little information about my ancestors. In searching for an answer, it became clear that my forebears experienced a full kaleidoscope of factors that caused generational breaks in family ties. Starting with pre-revolutionary Russia and dekulakization and continuing with repressions due to Jewish heritage. They also faced constant relocation within the Soviet Union due to assignments, the search for a better life, which further severed connections and lost contact.

Based on this experience, I created a necklace in the form of a genealogical tree, where photos represent the relatives I know, while the rest, unfortunately, remain closed to me.

Evgenia Elanic

Lost Not Forgotten

Georgia

Jewelry series, 2024.
Silver, brass, quartz.

I am lucky to have a very valuable heirloom. I know who I am. I know a lot about my family. My great-great-grandfather lived near my home, which I had to leave only recently. I don't know what kind of person he was, but he had to work very, very hard to make his way from peasant to nobleman. His house was very, very close... But it was wooden, and it was in Moscow. Now there is a road there.

Maybe somewhere deep underground, under the asphalt, there is an old log basement. There, in a gap between the logs, in dust and dirt, lies for me a greeting from the distant, distant past. They probably were not rich people; it would be strange to imagine lost diamonds and gold there. But even non-precious jewelry rusted by time would be the most precious heirloom to me. As it would be a connection to people I admire.

Yana Solovyeva | Natkala

Frames

Russia

Textile series, 2024.
Linen, cloth.

The "Frames" series is a reflection on the heirloom I never had. Our family history barely reaches back to my great-grandmothers and disappears into Siberia, along with all possessions accumulated. Divorces, relocations, remakes, and resales left just odd scraps, mismatched earrings, a lace valance, and a German trophy razor.

After years of studying handmade textiles, I noticed that some parts remain intact often: areas with embroidery, reinforced with seams, or folded into pleats. The fabric decays, and even the items carefully preserved turn into lines, a handful of “bones” with names like “sarafan”, "dushegreya"*, "necklace". These "force lines" of textiles are the frames.

The three pieces, parts of a wedding attire, speak about vulnerability of the exposed body, the bitterness of inability to restore past wholeness, the absence of color telling much about age, status, and belonging, and unavoidable losses. They also speak of the invisible support remaining after everything was lost.

*Literally “neck warmer”, a female clothing resembling a cardigan

Alexandra Martysh

The Door with no Key

Russia

Necklace, 2024.
Copper, brass, pearl, tourmaline, citrine.

The door without the key. This pendant is about stories that will never be told, since people who could tell them are gone and memories are gone with them. I love convoluted family stories deeply and have a lot of them in my kin. But some of them are already gone. The story about the great-great-grandfather, an enamel artist; about the Georgian prince, also an ancestor; about the treasure in the grandfather's old house. These stories’ narrators passed away not so long ago.

The key is lost, the door is sealed, and it will never be opened despite the hinges being in perfect condition. On the bottom of the pendant, there are faces carved from pearl, male and female, kids and elders. The stories of these people will never be told and heard anymore.

Alexandra Martysh

The Key from no Door

Russia

Brooch, 2024.
Copper, tourmaline, steel needle.

The key without a door, the key that opens nothing. Such keys are from my childhood memories, when they were my toys. The one from the wardrobe, the one from the table. Those were never locked, so their keys were meaningless and ended up in my childhood possession. Some of the keys were a mystery, as there was no lock that could be opened with them. There were keys but there were no doors.

The story behind some other items was also missing. My grandmother and grandfather still argue about the blue service. Where is it from? To whom did it belong? Beautiful sandals with gold embroidery and red patent soles. Who was the Cinderella that wore them? The glass lemon-shaped box is the case where even the key is gone, and relatives think it never existed in the first place. The Key with no Door is an accessory about things with their stories lost. The artifact is here. The story obviously existed, but there is no one to remember it. The key is here, but its door has disappeared.

Tatevik Karapetyan

Fragile Past

Uzbekistan

Series of brooches, 2024.
Found objects, mixed media.

My grandfather was cheerful and funny person, even by standards of my big Armenian family. He would often come up with songs and limericks. Also, he just loved inventing mysterious compositions without any practical meaning. Only for beauty of it, maybe? Sadly, I can’t ask him about it anymore. And I miss deeply our chatting and assembling cryptic hardware pieces.

A series of brooches in the assemblage style made of details that take you back to your childhood. Where crystal chandeliers stand next to slanted houses, and there are mountains and cherry orchards all around.

Nina Veresova

Rush a Horse not with a Whip but with Oats

Russia

Series of brooches, 2024.
Found objects, mixed media.

I don’t know much about my family. My grandfather was the youngest of four sisters and a brother, who later ended up in Belarus, Ukraine, Vladivostok, and he himself in Moscow. Grandpa would often say that he’d like to see his sisters again, and their graves later, but he never made it. Grandpa crafted important things himself: tables, shoes, a hay mattress, knives. He taught me each thing has a purpose.

He passed on to me some of his belongings: a knife and a handsaw in handcrafted leather cases, a box full of coins and a salt box, an engraved bowl, and a silver spoon. He gifted to me this spoon just like every child in the family; he and his brother and sisters must have had one of their own. Grandpa treasured my spoon and ate porridge with it every morning. I piece together my spoon thread by thread, weaving in memories of people I never saw. You can’t eat porridge with this spoon, but it will stay like a precious gift, pretty and shiny.

Vera Kolesnikova

Precious Liliaceous

Russia

Double necklace, 2024.
Nickel silver, plexiglass.

Part of my heirloom is plexiglass products, an echo of Soviet past. My grandparents had various items made of this material in their house: curtain rods, clock decor, a box. Some of them were carved by my grandfather and father themselves. I made the details of the table decoration that I loved looking at as a child the central element in my work.

My father cut out these tulips. They used to be a composition. An interesting experience of collective work through time: my dad from the past and, 49 years later, me from the present. This way, something not thrown away can become an ornament passed down by inheritance.

Galina Ignatenko

Our Breed

Russia

Ribbons, 2024.
Vintage textiles, wood

For the canvas for this work I used an old towel that was bought 35 years ago in Riga. It has traveled with our family through countless kitchens since then. I embroidered images of the people whose hands it remembers.

I thought about my family, about the features that I, and others, see in myself. I look like my mother, frown like my grandmother. Sometimes I do not remember those who I allegedly look like, they are just images in a photo. Some died in the war, someone left our family, someone passed as a child. Each stitch is a search for answers about my family and myself. How does “my breed” shape me? How do I shape it? Through embroidery, I explore the stories of people in the fabric of my life, trying to understand who I am and what part of this story I want to carry forward.

Relatives often describe the personality or looks of someone from our family, "this is our breed." Conversely, "why does he behave like this? This is not our breed!". Well, what is "our breed", actually? How is belonging to a family measured by breeds? Is it a bad thing to be different?

Carl Solomon

Daggers

Georgia

Ring, 2024.
Silver.

My father makes knives. My grandfather was stabbed ten times in the back and survived. My great-grandfather reached Warsaw with the help of a bayonet, and my great-great-grandfather carved out his free future with a saber. The history of my family, like the history of the Don region, has been closely intertwined with weapons.

The "Daggers" ring was made primarily for myself as the first element of a new collection of cold weapons, which I was forced to leave in Russia. Daggers bring back to me the feeling of security that is possible only on my native land and remind me that a knife is, first and foremost, a shield.

Vera Factor

Reset

Georgia

Pendant, 2024.
Silver, gold plating.

Sometime in 2023, I was having tea in the kitchen, and a pack of “Yubileynoye”* cookies were lying on the table. I suddenly noticed the inscription “since 1913” under the name. So that’s 110 years ago, before the revolution? But this name is firmly ingrained in our consciousness as something undeniably Soviet. Whose anniversary is it, then?

“Yubileynoye” cookies were made for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov royal family. So, the cookies themselves have changed little, but their cultural and associative meaning has been completely replaced. Their original meaning was reset. How often does this happen to objects? How frequently – with us?

Perhaps, likely, even, I will be able to reset my own meaning, to shed the burden of the past, freeing my body and energy for a leap forward. I’ve embedded this aspiration into the pendant, making it my talisman.

*Eng: Anniversary

Maria Mironova

Family Fears

Türkiye

Brooch, 2024.
Metalclay bronze, nickel locks, nanosital, magnets, paper, ink.

I inherited some real estate from my grandfather. As I inherited the fear of telling anyone about it. Because “you can be rich only by stealing” and ”they’ll come and take away everything”.

“Never tell anyone about this,” as my mother was instructed by her grandfather. Just in case. Because it is unsafe to be a Jew. My great-grandfather's name was Moisei Osherovitch, but everybody knew him as Mikhail Oskarovitch. When I was ten and found some of my Grandmother’s papers, I found out that her patronymic was Moiseevna rather than Mikhailovna.

There is a fear of telling anybody where your family is from. “Your great-grandfather and great-grandmother are from Kozelets, Chernihiv oblast*”, my mom tells me. “Just don’t tell this to anyone now”.

I was never hurt by anyone because of my name, background, or financial well-being. For now, at least? But in my heart, these fears are rooted deeply.

*Kozelets, Chernihiv oblast is in Ukraine

Katia Rabey

Comforters

Israel

Necklace and earrings, 2024.
Textile, aluminum, brass, silver, steel, found objects, enamel, powder coating.

In the 90s when my father bought a fax machine, my grandma had sewn a textile cover for it - sounds absurd, and yet! My family had long ago found the formula for the express-feeling-at-home, express-coziness - textile. Curtains, pillowcases, bedspreads – the house becomes a home only when you throw in some fabrics. When my mom and I were leaving Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, colorful pillow-cases appeared in our new dwelling before the microwave did.

I have never been able to sew, but I still have a strong habit of feeling at home only if a floral-patterned comforter is thrown onto the bed. This is how the “Comforters” series was born: found objects, hardware store findings, a chain from a clearly stolen bicycle picked up from the curb. The most random selection of things mixed up with some fabrics – exactly the same fabrics that my mom used – in order to create this feeling of home.

Aleksey Maximov

Infant of Babel

Georgia

Pendant, 2022.
Wood.

The Infant of Babel was born in 2022, during my forced emigration to Armenia. I worked on him for about six weeks, living in a small town without my tools, without life plans. In that new condition, I was overwhelmed by the need to care about someone. So I carried him like an actual child.

I kept thinking about thousands of lives ruined because of a few pride and ambitious men. How many times did it happen? How many times will it happen again? I was remembering stories about the Revolution and my great-grandmother, an exiled revolutionary. About my grandad who returned from WWII as a mutilated hero. About my mother forced to abandon her father’s Jewish last name to be allowed to enter a university.

I could not help but think how absurd that was. Hollow and obsolete ideas of an eternal struggle, sowing discord and misery. Something has to replace it, it’s long overdue. From the crumbling walls of pride, arrogance and cruelty of the Tower of Babel, an innocent child is being born.

Tatevik Karapetyan

What Do I Take if I Leave for Good

Uzbekistan

Research, 2024.
Fabric, embroidery, old key.

Packing your life in a knapsack and taking it with you is a hard task. My family has moved at least three times. As the circumstances were different, so were the things we took. One remains the same: to take something you can’t live a “normal”, familiar life without. So how do we choose?

When my sister and I were leaving for Uzbekistan, we took books, figurines, pictures, and posters. Without these, our future lives seemed “empty”. When my mother moved from Armenia to Russia, she took useful everyday things. When my relatives were forced to leave Nakhijevani (now Azerbaijani territory), their large family had only a few hours to pack, and they took almost nothing.

I decided to find out what other people take when moving or emigrating. I asked relatives and friends and made a poll on social networks. The second part of my work is based on these answers in collaboration with illustrator Anna Romanyuk.

Tatyana Kulikova

Layers

Russia

Necklace, 2024.
Glass, metal, ribbons.

Layers is a work about the feeling of home taken with you. I've always loved running my fingers along walls and tying my memories to what I see on the streets. I lived in St. Petersburg's Petrogradka district for eight years, and it is so much my place that I don't want another.

The bottom thread is for the colors of the buildings. Above it is the Karpovka River. Two rows of barrel-shaped beads are for the houses on my street. The top row is for squares, which the public utility workers paint over graffiti. There are also things that made me who I am. “ИПТ” corresponds to the book "Citizens of the Sun" by Ilya Borovikov. “ДВОР 13” is for the non-existent courtyard of the Benois House and Renata Litvinova's film "The Last Tale of Rita". «УБЕЖИЩЕ» is for paintings by the artist Nikolai Chiryatyev.

I want to pass this heirloom on to my daughter, as my material bridge through time and distance.

Eira Teufel

Cut It off

Location undisclosed

Brooch, 2024.
Velvet Gucci polyamide, vintage silk, steel, gold plating.

This way, it will be easier when they force you to run again.
My heirloom is my memory. Memory of forget-me-nots trampled, of a pear tree swamped, of a rusty kolkhoz knife broken. Of pine trees, of izbas lopsided and abandoned. Of boys stealing apples with us and eating ripe raspberries heated under the sun. They can’t check this at the customs, nor can’t they see this on an X-ray.

The future is like a memory cell wiped clean right now. You can’t possibly know what data it will hold again, or if it will hold any data at all. We’ll see. In the meantime, make it easier and cut it off.

Iren Gabelia

Roots

Israel

Necklace, 2024.
Wood, wool.

My life is a series of relocations started against my will. The first war affected me directly when I was 14 years old. From Sukhumi to Moscow. I had to change my traditional Caucasian life for something unclear, unstable, and unfamiliar. From Moscow to Tel Aviv. I moved to Israel to study at Shenkar, which went somewhat comfortably. The mess in Russia was escalating, and the desire to return never appeared. Then there was a second war. And then a third one found me, already in Israel.

All this time my roots, though suffocating sometimes, supported me. They are my heirloom.

Anna Nazarenko

Sirins at Day and Night

Georgia

Necklaces, 2024.
Wood, textiles, metallic thread, glass beads, plastic beads, birch branches.

Russian language and Christian culture were key parts for my formation, as I was a person without a nation and a country, had several homes and felt like I belonged nowhere. Instead, I had to imagine and create my life as a fairytale, to make up traditions that never existed, and to restore images of old arts, trying to feel the connection with something I never knew about.

I made a couple of accessories in the form of traditional borok* and mixed it with several elements of my own. Thus, I move from reflecting on a pain from belonging nowhere to a joy of traditions and myths knowledge.

*Russian folk jewelry, a necklace

Ekaterina Korzh

Memento Mori

United States

Necklaces, 2023.
Mixed Media

My latest works help me to overcome challenges in my life: the death of a close relative, the war and tragedy of my country, and emigration.

My interest in pieces of the past dates back to my childhood, when we often played among the ruins of an unbuilt empire. We were always looking for treasures there. I still do everywhere I go, collecting stones, twigs, seeds, and pottery. Likewise, materials for this series come from seashores. These things are like pieces of others’ lives, telling their stories, never noticed by us.

Lately, I often remember the phrase “Memento Mori”. Life is short. But that means each day is valuable. Life is a tapestry of endless complexity, a weave of fates, possibilities, events, and people. The details of necklaces are connected with each other by linen embroidery. Each necklace also hides a secret; some elements pretend to be what they are not. A shampoo bottle cap turns into a golden ornament, and a heavy cowbell turns into a necklace clasp.

Vera Factor

Paper Boats

Georgia

Brooch, 2022.
Silver, mother of pearl, steel, spinel.

I started the first version of this project even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine – it was my graduation project. This brooch is very personal to me. Initially, it was about uncertainty, the complexity of choice, an unstable yet static position. Between the little boats, Lermontov's poem is written in Morse code.

The lonely sail is showing white
Among the haze of the blue sea!..
What does it search in foreign part?
What left it in the native land?..*

Then the full-scale invasion happened, and the brooch gained a second meaning. Suddenly, these feelings became a shared experience, with a specific meaning and about specific events. Countless number of people, living through the challenges of our time, are searching for hints and answers, for guidance in the experiences of people from the past. When emigrating, many of us take with us only our experience, upbringing, memories, and the cultural context in which we lived and grew up. Something that can not be taken away from us easily.

* Translated by D. Smirnov-Sadovsky

Elena Mosiyko

Masks

Georgia

Mask, 2024.
Artificial hair, epoxy resin, acrylic varnish.

In all cultures, hair has a deep sacred meaning as a thread connecting us with the past. Hair keeps memories in its strands and is a materialization of what we bear through time.

Through that image, I wanted to express everything that changes in us, and that comes to us in emigration, whether it was forced or not.

Masks symbolize change when our stories intertwine and transform but remain inextricably bound to our roots. My works are to explore that fragile edge between keeping something and losing it, between permanence and change, between past and present.

Aleksey Maximov

Daemons

Georgia

Object, 2023.
Wood.

When we are leaving home for good, some things will be taken with us; some things will be left. Some things will be thrown away, and some things will be bought again. And there is a specific something, like a hatch-penny always returning to you no matter how many times you try to dispose of it. These are our wounds and traumas; in anyone’s life, they are an obligatory painful experience, especially during “historic times".

These figurines were created in the midst of intense, agonizing emotions, and they have walked a long path since. At first, I kept them away from other works, out of my sight. Then I defined them as chess figures, supposed to win every time against other, lighter ones. Now they are settling in. Yes, they are grim. But they are mine.

Eira Teufel

Hidden and Found

Location undisclosed

Shirt, 2024.
Linen, cotton, glass beads, polyester.

Censored society was nothing new, but the communists were the most inventive in the field. Our parents were hiding evidence of connection with imprisoned relatives – letters, documents and photographs, under the lining of their clothes. They changed “untrustworthy” names to appropriate ones. They printed Samizdat, works of banned authors, on makeshift printers.

We are afraid of carrying certain books around again. The Foreign Agents list is updated every week, so your bookshelf can become a crime weapon overnight. This anxiety drags us down like invisible crippled wings.

On the inside, I placed pages of the 2nd chapter of "The Master and Margarita" by Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov, banned in the USSR as “counter-revolutionary”. The history repeats itself – the 2024 film adaptation again attracted the government’s attention. I underlined important words with beaded threads connected on the other side. Words can be banned but they always find a way back. At least we hope so.

Vera Popova

I Will Have to Go Back

Russia

Facepiece, 2024.
Glass

"I will have to go back" is a phrase that often is spoken by people leaving Russia temporarily. Myself included. Because we will have to go back, to live and work in our country, so now we have to be cautious with our words and actions to avoid legal persecution.

This is a gag, only with a candy in your mouth. It’s a symbol of trying to cheer yourself up, to sweeten the pill, to chew on the carrot harder, trying to forget about the stick. Human psyche is flexible. In the last years I could clearly see how naturally and smoothly we get used to restrictions, how we rationalize and find excuses. We praise ourselves for our perseverance…

… and the gag becomes a candy. But it is made of glass. It has no taste, it will not bring joy or satiation. And, one day, it will burst with shivers, crushed under teeth of a person forced to endure for too long.

I, as many others, have to keep silent about many things. Because I will have to go back.

Agnia Likratowa

Knowledge Disarmed

Serbia

Necklace and cuffs, 2024.
Stainless steel, glass, rope.

Humanity is constantly evolving and growing in complexity, but the heritage of generations is with us. The sum of human knowledge is right there, a click or a tap away; it has never been so easy to learn and advance. Sadly, all these possibilities may be worthless.

Our government lives in the past, violent and ignorant. Stay down and silent or be welcome in a gulag hellhole in the Far North. Your great-grandfather was a smartass too, and he ended exactly like that. Your country does not need what you have to say. Nor does it care.

We know this pain well – to watch, unable to speak, to understand, unable to act. No advances in science and philosophy can help when you are tied with the barbaric superstitions and hatemongering, elevated to law by the state.

Sophisticated and elegant lacy chainmail is a symbol of one’s cognition and evolution. Their hands are tied with a rough rope of state’s violence. Primal and wretched, it is still working as well as it worked with your ancestors.

Dina Samsonova

The World* That Shattered

Israel

Transformer accessory, 2024.
Silver, steel, glass smalt.

Since childhood, I was surrounded by Peace: Avenue of Peace, Square of Peace, Culture Hall “Peace”. There also were mosaics, many mosaics depicting peace, labor, pigeons, and people, happy and free. My heirloom is shattered splinters of that world stuck in my heart. Did this world exist at all? Or did it live and die in my head only?

The prototype for the caption is an urban mosaic from the Samara oblast’.

*In Russian, the word “мир” means both “peace” and “world”.

Karine Gabrielyan | (KJ story)

Matreshka

Spain

Brooch and pendant, 2024.
Copper, enamel.

I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and for a long time, I followed the path my parents had chosen for me. But in 2017, I suddenly decided to change my life, and that was when I discovered jewelry making. In 2018, I enrolled in a school of metalsmithing in Madrid and moved to Spain. Whenever I was asked where I was from, I would say Russia. But now, I feel terrified that my country of birth is involved in the killing of people in Ukraine and Russia.

This situation reminds me a lot of what Azerbaijan and Turkey have done to my ancestral homeland, Armenia. This war has awakened my Armenian roots, and since 2022, I have seen more beautiful places and museums in Armenia than I ever did before. This country has a rich history, and though it’s really small, it deserves to be known, visited, and recognized. I now feel like I have found my life's mission: to bring Armenia to as many people as possible through my jewelry.

Maria Pukhova | OH!Masha

White Stitch

Georgia

Earrings series, 2023.
Silver, copper, enamel, pearls.

This gray pearl series of jewelry is inspired by the northern culture and the northern embroidery in particular. All my childhood, I traveled in the Russian North, watching and accumulating knowledge about my roots. It was only as I grew older that I appreciated the importance of maintaining connections with my ancestors, in my case through culture.

This way, the “White Stitch” series was born. It tells about the beauty of embroidery and about pearls as the most beautiful craft of the Russian North.

Iren Gabelia

Adjika

Israel

Necklace, 2016.
Silver, hot enamel.

Everyone's childhood tastes different. Mine is spicy with herbs. The recipe for adjika is very simple: chili pepper and salt. There are variations with spices and walnuts. We used to eat adjika with everything. Even with watermelon. Adjika was also believed to prevent diseases and boost immunity.

Many years have passed since I left my homeland, but there always will be a jar of adjika in my fridge. Either my mom's or my own.

Zhanna Assanova

Kurak

Kazakhstan

Jewelry series, 2019.
Metal zippers, felt, silver

I was born in Kazakhstan. The “Kurak” jewelry series is made using the patchwork technique that ancient nomads used to sew blankets and carpets. Instead of fabric scraps, I use metal zippers from leftover sewing accessories. In the center of the necklace, the main symbol is located. Two rings symbolizing eyes are a Kazakh tribal sign and are a symbol of my kin. Unfortunately, hand sewing of blankets and rugs is practically nonexistent in our time, and I use machine stitches along the edges of the necklace to highlight this.

Exaggerated, deliberately noticeable zigzag-like stitches represent a modern footprint on the canvas of an ancient way of life. Imperfect and loose edges of the textile symbolize signs of use and wearing out of the piece.

The “Kurak” series tells us about our heritage, history, and culture in the form of skills that were transformed into accessories.

Irena Pabo

Cranes

Estonia

Earrings, 2024.
Silver, gold plated in keum-boo technique, amazonite beads.

An heirloom is what a girl takes to a new, married life. To enter this life, she has to die symbolically first. And she will never be able to come back to her old family – the sea is crossed and the boat is burned down. “I'll sit down, curl up, and fly up”, as folk songs tell us about the only way to visit close ones. To turn into a bird.

The “Cranes” earrings are like a treasure passed down from mother to daughter, which gives her an ability to turn into a bird and fly home in moments of anguish and despair. In former times, the earrings were vibrant and opulent. But time took its toll; the gold plating is partially lost, and the silver is darkened and worn down. Only the modest upset crown of amazonite beads remains the same.

These earrings tell us about the inability to return to one’s past, about the river of time that separated what was and what is. The living cannot go back. The living person has to live now.

Eira Teufel

It Was Spring and I Was Home

Location undisclosed

Mask, 2024.
Polyester, cotton, glass.

Heirloom doesn't have to always be sad. I made this mask to remember cheerful times with my family. The Soviet government tried to erase many things for its new society, including religion, local customs and folk traditions. Some things, however, have survived all these turmoils and these fragments connect us with bright moments of the past.

For example, Maslenitsa, originally a pagan holiday of awakening spring and life. Now, centuries later, we still bake pancakes in almost every house for Maslenitsa. This is an occasion not only to eat deliciously, but also to fool around carefree. For example – write it somewhere down just in case – you can bite holes in a pancake and make a mask. Sure, it’s not very practical, but it's fun! Those silly little funny things… that sometimes you need most. Let's try to remember that.

Tatiana Borisova

Childhood Carefree

Russia

Rings series, 2024.
Stabilized wood, metal, plastic, pearls.

Post-Soviet lands had their share of hard times, and each family carries its own mark of challenges and losses. Though different that mark may be depending on age and wealth, each of us has it. I want to remember something kind and benevolent, something that is always there somehow. I was a kid at that time, and with great tenderness, I remember my childhood trips to my grandparents in the country for the whole summer. Many kids had them.

Everything was different then; the summer lasted for the whole life, and no malady of the outside world could possibly distract us from our games and adventures. We saw everything as more bright and vibrant, and, I guess, it was necessary for us. This is my heirloom of memories. I am happy to be among those people who are lucky to remember those times with joy.

Masha Arndt

St. Thais

Georgia

Cross, 2024.
Silver, gold plating, hot enamel, pearls.

A souvenir, whether it is a religious item or a common one, can be given symbolic meaning and acquire a new significance – for example, as a magical amulet or a traditional heirloom. An artifact can be the starting point of one’s story and even become a relic.

My direct ancestors were forcibly resettled North Caucasian Germans. They didn't have the opportunity to pass on their culture to me. But they gave me a chance to know this world; they and sometimes complete strangers who lived in the neighborhood. A remarkable conjunction of events, empathy, and support gave me life, and this is my heirloom.

This work is meant to be an heirloom for a person very important to me, a girl named Taisiya. Her parents, who are very close to me, chose her name in advance. Though she was supposed to be born in August, she was destined to appear on May 23 instead, her name day. A miracle, one would say.

Oleh Tkachuk & Iana Tsebruk | Fly.In.Home

Music – Monisto – Namisto – Mephisto

Finland

Jewelry series, 2022.
Plastic, coral, wood, glass, found objects.

What will remain when we are gone?

• mysterious piece of recycled plastic, reminding us about necessity to save the world from enormous piles of trash
• coral beads inherited from my grandmother that remember the warmth of her skin and the smell of her perfume
• acquired during a trip to the Carpathians, a necklace made of painted wood, full of memories of wonderful encounters
• a bracelet made of lacquered wooden beads, given to me by my mother’s childhood friend in Lviv
• coral beads of different sizes, stored in a tin box for a long time. No one knows how the box appeared in our house
• a small piece of designer glass received from friends, like a dancing candle flame that illuminates the table during board games;
• the tiniest barrel organ found by my parents in a small antique shop in Verona, which plays the melody from the "Romeo and Juliet" movie. Crude and beautiful, it tells us that Love is stronger than hate

Anastasia Tkachenko

Traces

Russia

Series of rings and boxes, 2024.
Materials: glass caps from pre-revolutionary perfume bottles, brass, wood pulp.

As a kid, I used to love to dig in the grounds around our family home and find wondrous treasures there. But most of all, I loved to rummage through dust and rags in the attic of the old house. I found pieces of dishes, antique chandeliers, and brass handles. All this I collected carefully and stored in the most beautiful boxes.

These objects seemed to be from another world. A world where not only work, harsh living conditions, and poor food were but also beauty that was making life pleasant and joyful.

I consider it important to have such things in my life now.

My work for this exhibition is pieces of cultural heritage framed with me, the experience of past generations of my family, and the desire for beauty and love. These I consider the integral part of my life.