Load-bearing Wall
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.
Video-portrait: Studio Roodenburch
Infinite gratitude to the one and only curator Wilma Suto and to the entire team at the Dordrechts Museum for their trust and for making this work possible.
Photography:




