Supermarket I
Supermarket is a mixed-media series exploring migration, precarity, and systems of care through everyday spaces marked by labor and global economy flows.
Moving between sound-based works and textile pieces, the series draws from my personal experience.
The textile pieces, created through hand embroidery and upcycling, center repetition as a method.
The audio mixes, Romantic Lidl Collection Vol. I and Vol. II, extend these reflections into sound.
I left home—Kalmykia—in 2004. In 2010, I left Russia. I lived and studied in London, getting my degree in art.
From 2013 to 2015, I lived in Tottenham Hale, North London. The closest supermarket was Lidl. I knew its layout intimately—a choreography rehearsed hundreds of times.
After graduation, I moved to Berlin. The nearest shop was Lidl. The layout—just the same.
That first visit was surreal. It felt like being embraced too tightly by something deeply familiar – a dizzying experience.
Romantic Lidl Collection — the first audio expression in the Supermarket series—was made during a time when I often lingered in that place. It became a kind of refuge, a liminal space between my hours at job and the inner disquiet of private—shaped by a quiet, persistent overwhelm. It became a zone to decompress, recalibrate. It became the most stable point in my shifting world.
Another anchor was hand embroidery. The repetitive motion, stitch after stitch, calmed me. It lulled me into a safe trance, like the low morning chants from the Buddhist temple near my childhood home.
Supermarket I
Supermarket is a mixed-media series exploring migration, precarity, and systems of care through everyday spaces marked by labor and global economy flows.
Moving between sound-based works and textile pieces, the series draws from my personal experience.
The textile pieces, created through hand embroidery and upcycling, center repetition as a method.
The audio mixes, Romantic Lidl Collection Vol. I and Vol. II, extend these reflections into sound.
I left home—Kalmykia—in 2004. In 2010, I left Russia. I lived and studied in London, getting my degree in art.
From 2013 to 2015, I lived in Tottenham Hale, North London. The closest supermarket was Lidl. I knew its layout intimately—a choreography rehearsed hundreds of times.
After graduation, I moved to Berlin. The nearest shop was Lidl. The layout—just the same.
That first visit was surreal. It felt like being embraced too tightly by something deeply familiar – a dizzying experience.
Romantic Lidl Collection — the first audio expression in the Supermarket series—was made during a time when I often lingered in that place. It became a kind of refuge, a liminal space between my hours at job and the inner disquiet of private—shaped by a quiet, persistent overwhelm. It became a zone to decompress, recalibrate. It became the most stable point in my shifting world.
Another anchor was hand embroidery. The repetitive motion, stitch after stitch, calmed me. It lulled me into a safe trance, like the low morning chants from the Buddhist temple near my childhood home.