"Untitled #3" from the series "53 Hits"

Photography

Inspiration: My family's stories of life in the U.S.S.R. have always been filtered through a repressive, omnipresent Stalinist lens. As if at every waking hour, he stood watching them, as if they didn't have happy childhoods, lifelong friendships, and stable family lives. 53 Hits is the documentation of a staged action, through which I strive to (literally) break away from all of the pre-packaged narratives I inherited from my parents and forge ahead with a new identity separate from family myths. What this new "American" identity looks like, I do not yet know. But this is a step forward, and it is an audacious, if foolhardy, endeavor common to many second-generation Americans. 

The porcelain bust of Stalin functions as a stand-in for the Soviet past my parents worked hard to bury, and I desired to understand. The title refers to the year of Stalin's death, foreshadowing the profound changes the Soviet Union would undergo in the decade leading up to my parents' birth, but also to the number of times it took to fully destroy the bust itself.