Artist Statement
My work engages the American film The Wizard of Oz (1939) as a repository for both personal and cultural memory, drawing on its artificial sets, poppy fields, and Judy Garland’s performance of Dorothy to examine how cultural images are internalized, performed, and reimagined over time. Born in the former Soviet Union and raised in Chicago, I approach the film as an emblem of American mythology and a framework for considering acculturation, identity formation, and femininity as performance. I paint serial images of "Dorothy" based on the same reference photo, emphasizing the relationship of the non-linear nature of time in both acting and grief—a series that began following the tragic loss of my two-year-old son in 2022. Through repetition, fragmentation, unstable space, and heightened color, the paintings explore how images function as carriers of memory—performed, repeated, and altered over time.
