Once There Was There Wasn't - Svetlana Bailey

Until the age of eight, Bailey’s childhood summers were spent at her grandmother’s house in the Russian countryside. It was an influential period in which she discovered the world on her own, where many things happened for the first time and her earliest memories were formed. Sixteen years ago her grandmother passed away and now the house stands empty. For this body of work, Bailey returned to her grandmother’s empty house to examine those early impressions. Through this journey of return, she was transported in time, as if opening a time capsule. Here Bailey discovered layers of image fragments captured in stories, old objects, images in albums and magazines. They pointed to the invisible marks, the impressions and mental images that remain, and perhaps for this reason— besides the dust, spider webs and the thicket of birch and cherry trees that had enjungled the outside— the house did not seem abandoned.