Études from Siberia, 2026

Ruumi- ja heliinstallatsioon: muld, vili, leib, huulepulk, hällilaul

Études from Siberia is an attempt to gain access to the time and space into which my ancestors were displaced and imprisoned after the Second World War. Through interviews and recollections shared by deportees, I explore situations in which materials, under conditions of extreme scarcity, acquired shifting functions and symbolic meanings. The work emerged from soil — a material that is generative and destructive at once, cracking and crumbling as it dries, yet responding well to slow compression, endless binding and patient effort. The slow, continuous labour demanded by soil gradually became a structuring principle within the process itself, shaping how fragmented memories were connected and tied together. The installation incorporates bread and lipstick, from which imprisoned women fashioned prayer beads using their final scraps of food and lipstick they had carried with them; grain, which became both payment for labour and a measure of value; and song, which spared my great-grandmother from exhausting fieldwork and led her to work as a music teacher in a Siberian orphanage. The sound installation features songs and spoken recollections by Alo Põldmäe.