Know where you came from and where you are going... This work is part of a project that revolves around the artist Masha Ferentsev’s (b. 1989) return to her childhood landscapes in Birobijan, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast near the Russia-China border – which she left to live in Israel. The dreams and hopes for a happy and bright life were shattered by the language barrier and the great difficulty of communicating, bonding, and connecting. This loneliness awakened the need to visit her hometown in search of the thread that connects the cultures and will connect her to herself. The memory of the crumbling, bleak city and the gloominess and coldness of its residents moved to a new home, one born from the acceptance of the beauty in the complexity of things. With that, the physical place was replaced by an inner reality, translated through the soft light that falls on the objects, until the image of the individual in the composition is not so lonely. The physical space was substituted by a mental realm, full of imagination mediated through illuminated photographic compositions.

 

Maybe a woman, maybe a man, Maybe light, maybe shadow, 

Maybe belonging, maybe passing by, 

Maybe cold, maybe embraced by the warm sun, Maybe my figure, maybe my shadow, 

Maybe nothing remains, 

Maybe knowing, maybe wandering, With a firm step into the unknown.

 

Lior Herman 
Lior Herman is a professor at the Department of International Relations in the Social Sciences Faculty at the Hebrew University, specializing in international political economy, energy and politics.