The international exhibition at Dom Museum, titled "In the Spirit of Friendship" and dedicated to the theme of friendships and relationships, has opened in September 2024 and will run until the end of August 2025.
CEU Alumna Mayya Kelova, who is also a receipent of Advanced Certificate of Visual Theory and Practice, is part of the exhibition with her photos.
Please see Mayya's project description below:
Project title: Stories we did not tell, secrets we did not share.
Project description:
I remember the day my sister left home, especially the last minutes before her departure to Georgia. Looking at me and our dad through the window of the train, she was crying. I was too. This is probably the strongest memory I have of her of all the time we had together before her move.
She was only 16, and I was 13. Our next meeting happened 10 years later.
This project began as an attempt to get closer to my sister and eventually became an exploration of our relationship. The void that ten-year separation created won’t be filled with new memories, but as adults with our own families, we are discovering a new familiarity.
This project is also a reflection of our newly formed roles: a mother, and an aunt, as my sister gave birth to her first child several years ago – something that redefines our relationships, changes the dynamic within, and even brings us back to our childhood – to the time before the separation.
In the process of photographing our shared moments, I use two cameras: a digital camera from the present and a film camera from the past that our father bought a few years before my sister’s move to Georgia, which captured much of our childhood in Turkmenistan. I aim these two lenses at my sister and myself, at our common stories and separate paths.
Sometimes photographing us feels like a game, but maybe this process will bring us closer.
2022 — work in progress/ Mayya Kelova
