The only things that you can have forever are those from your childhood.
Tonino Guerra
“Returning” is a memory exhibition…
This chamber, meditative, and personal project appeals to the deeply intimate and eternal living in all of us – the memory of our childhood. In this case, the picture becomes the main element of the constructed and memorable image. Or rather, a collection of images and memories, packaged in an old movie. “No processing or manipulation of the original image, everything is on film…”. Some strange effects of the old film and flaws of the technical process become the unique way to visualize memories and read them like clear images of the experience introducing it into the context of universal intertemporal categories. Thus, it creates a clear and readable image. In this case, the photograph becomes a medium, a material carrier of something elusive and non-articulated. Here occurs a transition of the thin matter of memory to real objects and images.
Marina Batiukova builds the exhibition space by creating a new author’s photographic series, family archive, and ready-made objects, old items that acquire new life from a thought or statement.
The principle of construction of the exhibition is immersion. The author provokes a state in which man is introduced to a boundless time. The recreation is not as much the event, as the emanation, the cover (Bart), putting the visitor into a field for interaction – the exhibition. The center of the narrative is a city! Snow-covered, happy, joyful town of childhood. “The frozen river Svisloch, where we ice-skated, the old playgrounds , the church, the one that my Mom went to, and later I married in…” The city that is long gone, but one that forever remained a magical memory, that makes you want to keep returning.