In 2022, I had to leave my home, leaving my family, hometown and friends behind. This isolation was hard for me. There wasn't a day when I didn't think about going back. I had no strength or desire to move on; I felt the isolation of my roots and a destroyed reality, while being in sunny and hospitable Georgia.

A year and a half later, I went home for a while. At that moment, I began to realize that my home was no longer here. The same friends, family and views surrounded me, but the place I was in felt foreign. I didn’t yet understand that this trip was my goodbye until I began to cross the border from Russia to Georgia. Then the Russian border guard gave me a short interrogation, summing up that the place I was coming from now was not my home.

From this phrase I realized the irrevocability of my past life and me in it.

While already in Georgia, I thought about the emotions of a person cut off from home. I noticed a similarity with natural motifs, especially with the root system of a tree. It seemed to me that nowhere had more answers than them. Plants and trees are transplanted into foreign soil, and they are not always able to take root in it. And sometimes this is only a temporary part, and later they become fixed in their position and continue to grow.

I began to walk around the city and find the same «emigrants» in buildings, plants and the river. There were also images from their native places — a destroyed factory and a beloved area after the «storm of the century». These places with their conditions seemed to me very successful for my story. In the remaining photographs, I looked for a reflection of my «disconnected» feelings and recorded them.

In my work I encourage the viewer to think about the meaning of home, homeland, roots and identity. It confronts us with the following questions: how external circumstances can influence our internal experiences, especially when it comes to emigration.