I create installations that stage familiar social environments—such as bars, domestic interiors, and exhibition spaces—where objects, figures, and lighting are arranged to suggest situations that feel real but never fully unfold.

Installation view dispersed non-existence, 2023
Photo by Ivo Faber
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

In works like The Bar, a functioning bar stands at the center of the space, complete with a counter, glassware, lighting, and seating. Mannequins in tailored outfits stand in for human presence; they are positioned around tables or throughout the room as if caught mid-conversation or waiting. In my practice, social systems are not negotiated but rather utilized as aesthetic material. The promise of interaction remains suspended.

I work with textiles, clothing, furniture, printed matter, and found objects. Parallel to these large-scale scenographies, I develop an ongoing series titled day residues. In these works, I log everyday moments in fabric, thread, and paint.

Aspects of my own biography as a Jewish-Tatar refugee from the former USSR are woven into the work, alongside historical and fictional narratives of other figures.

Lighting plays a central role; studio lights and color filters create zones of clarity and shadow, shaping how the space is perceived. In this artificial atmosphere, that which is often excluded from everyday life becomes palpable: a latent voyeurism and the ambivalent needs that underpin our social spaces.

Within the installations, narrative fragments emerge in the form of texts, loggings, and objects. Rather than forming a closed narrative, they create overlapping perspectives and temporalities in which personal and fictional elements remain unresolved.

The environments I create invite viewers into situations that seem familiar but feel slightly out of sync. In these spaces, attention shifts toward the construction of behavioral patterns and spatial presence — reaching a point where visitors become conscious of their own “being-on-display” within the staging.

current:

Die sozialistische Ecke (The socialist corner, 2023) is now part of the collection of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. Since July 2026, the work is on view in the collection presentation Collection in Motion, 15 stories at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. The corner is not just for looking: you are invited to sit down and read the loggings of the two characters.

logging bad deeds has only ever existed in German. Translation into English and produced as new hand-bound editions are in preparation.