The Inner Ground

Is identity fixed, or does it change as we move through life? What forms it, and what has the power to transform it? I was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Russia. At nineteen, I left. Since then, I have lived in the United States, Argentina, England, Belgium and now Spain. In 2025, I received Spanish nationality. A new document. A new name on paper. And with it, a pause. What does it mean to belong? Does a new passport reshape who I am? This project emerged from these questions.

I have come to understand identity not as something we consciously construct, but as something formed much earlier, through childhood, family and culture, through what we absorb before we have language. Stories, gestures, tones of voice, ways of relating and seeing the world become the foundation. They come from those before us, from lineage, inherited memory, a cultural rhythm carried in the body. This is the core. Everything else builds on it.

For me, that ground is Russian, not as a political definition, but as a field of memory, sensibility and inherited patterns. It remains as life moves across countries and languages. Living elsewhere adds layers, but does not replace the base. Identity expands and adapts, but its foundation persists.I

n Russian tradition, the table is the centre of the home, a place of gathering and exchange. The tablecloth is not a decoration. It prepares the space, marks it as intentional, and creates the ground on which everything happens. It is the base.

In this work, the tablecloth becomes a metaphor for identity itself, a surface that holds what we carry. Before you, a sequence of images from my personal archive unfolds, fragments of daily life and moments of significance. Together, they form a cultural and emotional landscape, an entry point into who I am.

The images, scattered and roughly stitched, exist in different states. Some are clear, others faded, partially lost, transformed. Memory is not fully conscious. Much of what shapes our lives is outside awareness, stored as impressions rather than precise images. The faded photographs speak to what is absorbed but not fully seen, while newer images appear more defined, closer to what can be named.

Both lineage and memory carry a wild quality. Lineage grows across generations beyond control. Memory moves unpredictably, holding fragments while letting others disappear. Between these forces, identity takes shape. Embroidery enters as an act of protection. Across cultures, it has been used to guard and to hold meaning. The symbols draw from traditional Slavic embroidery. The mother marks origin, the tree traces lineage, the star offers orientation. Together, they hold the fragile, shifting nature of memory.

Identity is not what changes. It is what remains underneath change.

Close-up of embroidered red and blue cross-stitch patterns on white fabric, including small landscape photographs featuring people and outdoor scenes.
A table covered with an embroidered white tablecloth decorated with multiple blue photos and red embroidery designs, situated on a concrete floor in a room with black cabinets in the background.
A collage of blue-tinted photographs, including a group of children and a woman wearing sunglasses, with a red embroidered design of a tree and other stitched elements on fabric.
A collage of blue-toned photographs and red embroidery. The photographs include images of buildings, people, and a snow scene. The red embroidery features snowflakes and geometric patterns, arranged in a symmetrical design.
White fabric surface with a small blue stamp of a framed black and white photograph, and a patterned paper with a lace-like edge in the foreground.
A white cloth with blue and red cross-stitch patterns and printed photographs of snowy mountain scenes and winter landscapes. The cloth is laid out on a surface outdoors.
Black-and-white photographs of children in outdoor settings, placed on a surface with decorative red embroidery and snowflakes.
Close-up of a fabric with printed blue geometric patterns and embroidered red text that reads 'LOVE'.
Close-up of a white fabric with a red embroidered snowflake design and a partially visible blue and white label.
A collage of blue-tinted photographs featuring various people and scenes, with a red embroidered design of a Christmas tree and reindeer in the center.
A table covered with a white cloth displaying numerous blue and white photographic squares and red embroidered patterns, with a gray concrete floor in the background.
A tablecloth with Christmas-themed red embroidered snowflakes and holly, decorated with old black-and-white and blue photographs spread out across the surface.