For more than twenty five years, Ksenia Galiaeva has been photographing her parents in the seemingly paradisiacal surroundings of her familiy’s Russian summerhouse in an attempt to influence her own memory and her family history. Due to her parents’ advanced age and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Galiaeva is drawing this long-term project to a close with a book, an audiobook, a film, a film installation in four parts, a book.
In Unreal Estate the Book, Galiaeva brings together the autobiographic stories that have always been present as background and driving force of her work, without being fully told, as well as a photographic collection made from 1997 to 2022.
This film and book project, an extension of Galiaeva’s photographic oeuvre, concludes the long period of working with her parents and is an ode to her characters and their history, which have shaped her as a person and artist, the only child of two Holocaust and labor camp survivors, and an ethnic mix of five nationalities (Jewish, Polish and German, Tatar and Russian) and four religions.
On October 29, Ksenia Galiaeva will present Unreal Estate the Book and release Unreal Estate the Audiobook with a performance together with Joachim Badenhorst. We will count with the presence of Ellen Rutten, professor of Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Amsterdam, for an introduction of the book.
On November 2, Ksenia Galiaeva will present a film preview of Unreal Estate the Movie at Filmhuis Cavia, Amsterdam. Click here for information and tickets
