BETWEEN HERE AND THERE
Current
There are places we live in, and places that live in us.
I’ve only ever known this place — grown up under its sun, spoken its languages (or at least attempted to), walked its malls and streets — and yet I’ve always felt suspended. Not quite from here. Not entirely from there.
Between Here and There is a personal and collective attempt to understand this feeling — the quiet in-between that so many of us carry. It begins with my own story, but expands outward: to others like me, born or raised in the UAE, or those who moved here with Russian roots, still circling the question of who we are and where we belong.
This project is built from fragments — the corner of a room, the faded embroidery on a tablecloth, a half-forgotten lullaby. It lives in kitchens, in gestures, in glances. It’s in the way someone chops an onion or folds a kitchen towel. It’s in the stories we tell ourselves in the absence of clear answers. Food runs through this work like a pulse. More than language, more than ritual, it is taste that returns me to something recognisably Russian. A soup. A slice of bread. An ice cream. These moments catch me off guard. For a second, I feel something land.
Between Here and There is a study of in-betweenness — cultural, emotional, generational. It is about the longing for a home that may not exist, and the beauty in building one anyway — out of memory, repetition, and shared recognition.
It does not try to explain.
It tries to see.
“Where are you from?”
I am Russian — but I was born and raised here.
I speak Russian, but sometimes stumble over words that should feel native. I live in a place that shaped me entirely, but one I’m not legally or culturally allowed to belong to. I grew up in between — emotionally, linguistically, politically — and for a long time, I didn’t know how to make sense of that.
This is the answer I’ve pieced together over the years, the one that slips out when someone asks — though maybe not in so many words. I can still hear myself saying it to a polite stranger: “I’m Russian, but I was born and raised here.”
I’ve started to wonder who I was saying it for. Was I trying to shift their assumptions — soften or reframe the image they might have formed the moment they heard the word Russian? Or was I saying it because I truly didn’t feel Russian enough to claim it fully?
That moment — that uncertainty — is where this project began.
