Motherland hears, motherland knows (2019 — 2023)This project is now available as a photobook published by FOTOHOF (Salzburg) in 2025. Order hereThe Gulag was a system of forced-labor camps in the USSR that reached its peak during Stalin’s rule.
My father was born in ALZhIR (the Akmolinsk Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), northern Kazakhstan in 1938. My grandmother was a pianist; she was arrested while pregnant in Moscow and sent to the camp for 8 years. All the children of the prisoners lived separately from their mothers, with barbed wire between them. Granny taught the commandant’s children to play piano.
When she heard that a comittee was coming to place the children into an orphanage, she told the commandant that if her son was taken away, she would not teach his children anymore. He announced quarantine for the entire camp—thus, none of the children were taken. My dad first saw his mother at the age of 8, when they were freed. They were deprived of civil rights until Stalin’s death. “Motherland hears, motherland knows” is the title and the beginning of a song my father sang in front of Iosif Stalin as a member of the leading Soviet boys’ choir.
From Kazakhstan to Georgia and Russia, the photographs in this project, alongside a collection of historical materials, document the travels which I undertook with my father between 2019 and 2023. Researching deep into historical events and revisiting the places where he lived during and after his imprisonment, our collaborative road-trip was an attempt to piece together the uncertainties about his past, which he had spent a lifetime trying to make sense of.
After having been born in the Gulag in 1938 and living in the shadows of accusations, he was once again threatened by state authorities in old age in 2022. Despite lifelong attempts and the intense process of working on this story, my father died in 2024 without knowing exactly why his mother was arrested so many years ago.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Simon Mraz, Dr. Helga Rabl-Stadler, Artists Solidarity Program Europe (ASoP) financed by BMEIA, DialogBüro Vienna and people whom we cannot name for their safety, for their support of the project. 