Sovetskaya Stenka - the iconic Soviet cupboard-wall - is transformed into a 1:18 dollhouse of a typical Soviet apartment block. Once an emotional and ideological load-bearing wall, it staged obedience, silence, and the image of the “correct” citizen. Behind its polished surfaces, this work excavates what still lingers beneath the veneer: interiors shaped by ideology, fear, loss, and survival. As parasites bore through wood and memory, they become symbols of an empire that never disappeared but merely changed form. Not a nostalgic reconstruction, Load-Bearing Wall exposes how imposed identity, colonial violence, cultural erasure, and displacement persist, echoing today’s neo-imperial aggression and the ongoing war against Ukraine.

“The gorged larvae evoke a rot from within—a political and psychological terror that crawls under the skin. Khozhai’s sculpture gives form to what migration leaves unseen.” — Wilma Suto, article for WORM Rotterdam