This Chapter is section of the exhibition devoted, in part, to nature. The works connect back to ancient landscapes and the presence of human beings within them. They also map out a sense of belonging to a specific place. This section considers the idea of place as realised exploration of historical roots, environment, politics, identity and traditional storytelling. The works collected in Location allow us to think about choice, and our own bodies in the context of a place. They question the stability and instability of borders, both physical and psychological, against a background of ever-changing political landscapes.

This black and white photograph is a natural continuation of his research into nature, for years the main subject of his work.

Rearranging natural elements at a particular spot, as a way of marking his presence, is a distinctive feature of his practice. England is derived from a physical involvement of the artist with the Bristol Downs, in Ashton Park. An ‘X’, seen in perspective, becomes visible in a field of daisies where the artist has plucked daisy heads to create the shape we see on the ground.

In the context of the Location chapter of the exhibition, the ‘X’ becomes a metaphor for choice, and the trodden path. It is about one person’s attempt to mark out a place of one’s own, engaging with the landscape. The title, England, ‘seems to assert Long’s identity as an English artist,’ [1] also brings a question of a sense of belonging in a nomadic world.

The text is based upon the following materials:

[1] https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-england-1968-al00210
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-england-1968-p07151

This work continues the conversation about body and space, environment and existence, that expressed in Circle of Signs, by Valery Lamakh. Untitled (Black) opens the Location chapter of the exhibition and sets its main agenda, which is to locate a place or part of one’s body in this part of the collection.

Against the black background, one can see a white geometric figure with black traces of human brushes depicted over it. These marks might be reminiscent of late paleolithic finger tracings. Referring to primordial practice and artistic experience dating back 30000 years, Cohen reminds us of the eternal desire of human beings to capture their traces. As the artist mentions, questions of identity are a key theme in his work. It is seen in the way he deals with gouache technique; black spots are perceived as unconscious and intuitive touches that speak of some eternal presence.

This work comes from a series entitled Three Sisters. The ideas emerging from when the artist stood on the border of three states: Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. For Starusiev, it is important to ‘document’ the emotional side of reality in his abstract compositions. The work suggests mutilated bodies and chopped innards with a sense of religion and reverence, evoking feelings of wonder and fear at something difficult to describe in words.

The work is in two parts because of technological limitations of large format photography. This in turn becomes a metaphor for borders and disputed territories. In the context of the Location chapter, the work illustrates the traumatic experience of self-determination, where finding a place of one’s own stumbles upon the invisible scars of history and territory.

This work was inspired by his 1933 visit to Avebury stone circles, the largest ritual prehistoric site of its kind in Europe

Looking from above, Nash creates, within the plane of the canvas, impressions of primordial stones from different angles drawn from memory. In England, Nash was appointed an Official War Artist during World War I and again when World War II began. This painting was made between the wars, with Europe once more under seige by totalitarian regimes. “Landscape of the Megaliths is a vision of the foreign-ness of English fields; it is a vision filtered through the archaeologist’s windscreen, or the binoculars of a new breed of English tourist, motoring out into rural parts armed with Shell Guides and Ordnance Survey maps” [1]. Politically and historically loaded, this painting, in the context of the exhibition, questions boundaries and nationalities, cults and rituals of our time.

[1] http://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/collection/artists/nash-paul-1889/object/landscape-of-the-megaliths-nash-1934-p3/objects/all/initial/n/page/1

This work typifies John Stezaker’s artistic practice, which often uses found and manipulated images. Stezaker himself has said, “most of my process when it comes to collages is about subtraction, taking things away, hiding things to engage the images in a sort of meditative relationship.” [1]

Double Shadow XXIV, in the context of the Location section of the exhibition, explores hidden presence, memory and human consciousness. Two silhouettes of a man and a woman, cut out of found images, seem as if they are ghosts in the landscape, showing a fight or struggle in some way. A suitcase on the right of the work hints at a possible journey or an escape.

[1] https://www.designindaba.com/videos/creative-work/john-stezaker-collage-subtraction or https://vimeo.com/82096614

This work depicts a nude woman, bent over. Her figure is curved like a bridge, on top of which a monkey is sitting. The monkey copies the posture of the woman but they face in opposite directions. The woman’s body is pale in colour against the background of a barren landscape. The painting is executed in muddied colours [1] that enhance a feeling of despair. In some European painting traditions, the monkey is perceived as evil, and a symbol of shamelessness, hypocrisy, and cunning. Sitting on a woman makes its position powerful, whereas the woman is submissive and vulnerable. Created in 1985, just a few years before the fall of the Iron Curtain, in the context of this Location chapter, this painting embodies the confusion of the human experience in a world of changing contemporary reality.

[1] https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/ansel-krut/

The artist specialises in portraits of people in their environments, citing emotion, realism and identity as key themes in her work

The series to which this work belongs includes a number of social documentary photo stories exploring issues of gender, identity and culture within Asian communities living in Britain and the USA.

In this photograph, one feels a dream-like quality of late afternoon light. We see a woman at a window, looking out. She has wrapped the lace window curtain around her head like a veil. She peeks through the window, staying in the comfort of the home, hinting at a strong sense of belonging to a specific location.

The work shows a projected map, drained of colour, in contrast to the marked maps with national flags and defined borders which we are used to seeing. The work suggests a neutral, common ground with land masses with no geographic barriers. The image with its soft cotton texture and watermarks and muted colour, speaks of environmental issues. As audience, we move beyond geo-political rows, conflicts, borders and controls to concerns about sea levels, global warming and melting ice caps.

Hatoum redraws the entire world, altering proportions of territories and continents, re-assembling landmasses and landscapes of terrains, representing the bigger picture. Her artistic play on shifting spaces and illusion is physically embroidered into the artwork.

This work is one of the paintings from the series Sovieticum, created during 2013-2014, long after the crash of the Soviet Union. Portraying solitary Soviet sand building blocks in isolated cityscapes, this work invokes complicated feelings of nostalgia and architectural brutality.

The architectural planes are simplified and abstracted, over-painted with crude marks and traces. A muted color palette and geometric constructivism contrasts with heavily gestured, vivid brushstrokes.

Bugiani’s storytelling remakes a figurative archival view of the past; here, the artist confronts stale political ideology and questions the meaning of the utopian urban space. Bugiani tries to find where individuals fit within massive historic political changes, and how we engage with these issues within our personal and political memory.

The photo series The Doukhobors' Land shows the everyday life of an ethnic and religious minority group of Doukhobors. The community were exiled by Tsar Alexander I of Russia to Georgia from 1840 onwards. Doukhobors founded eight villages in the Javakheti region, the largest of which was Gorelovka, considered their holy land. Their spiritual approach is that God is found in everyone and everywhere. The last twenty years has been difficult for Doukhobors and they have been slowly dispersed from Gorelovka. In the work, Grigalashvili tries to narrate and archive through ethnographic storytelling with rituals, clothing and traditional housing. The works depict not only the lives of the community but contributes to a long-term art project in which Grigalashvili actively integrates herself in the community to tell the story. Themes of cultural interaction, migration, isolation and assimilation are explored, preserving traditions, rituals and roots whilst in exile, across the whole series.

This Chapter acts as a bridge between location and dislocation, the other two sections of this digital experience. The artwork here connects and disconnects. We see transformation within ourselves and our surroundings. Changing landscapes and daily rituals and the relationship between time and space are explored in spiritual and physical ways. The human body is used as material, with performative elements in often non-linear storylines.

Circle of Signs, by Soviet Ukrainian artist Valery Lamakh, is the key work of the In Between chapter of the exhibition. The piece embodies core thinking within one of five books of poetic and philosophical essays entitled The Books of Schemes that Lamakh spent writing, over 30 years of his life.

He writes: “Circle of Signs leads to unity, and it also creates all differences. Circle: this is what keeps the world as a whole”.

The exhibition brings to life reflections by Lamakh which resonate within today’s contemporary world; one that is full of social constraints, and visible and invisible borders. Lamakh proposes to accept and to understand the world in all its differences, and to recognize it as a whole. To do this, he devised a scheme of signs that represents our attitude to the world. The sign exists in between the spiritual and material world, whereas black represents subjective, internal and the white means materia, external. Circle of Signs demonstrates transition of internal to external, invisible into visible and vice versa.

Living in the ambivalent situation of the Soviet reality behind the Iron Curtain, in Signs, Lamakh offers his philosophical reflection about the universe. He suggests that, “the Сircle of Signs destroys the familiar notion of ‘I’, which is strictly connected to a certain place, body, and time as well as prepares to the idea ‘I am You’”.

Through Bal’s installations, the exhibition space becomes a metaphor for the body, both physical and magnetic, creating experiences that linger in the mind and memories that don’t quite belong to reality.

Where I come from is a celebration of a contemporary feminist re-evaluation of witchcraft practice, installed within a space infused with sacred energy. The church itself holds the history of different regimes and the bodies that have passed into the afterlife. Making a circle of salt in the central church space, Bal creates an inner sanctum that welcomes her spiritual, artistic and witch self. These different components throw light on the existentialist dilemmas that human beings face in society.

The performance was especially conceived for the experimental virtual environment Shukhliada (https://shukhliada.com/#/menu). The project was curated by Ksenia Malykh, with camera and sound design by Ivan Svitlychnyi.

The performance took place in the outskirts of Poninka, the artist’s home town. Standing on a stone above the river with his left hand raised and seemingly on fire, the performance referred to the workers’ movement and the fight for human rights, questioning the historical and political dimensions that shape our landscapes. The artist chose to site the piece in a place where paper mill workers went on strike in 1905, an action which was immediately quashed by authorities.

In the work itself, Futymskyi asked, “...where in this horizon, stones and river, are the hooks that tell the story of an unrealized class struggle, the supposed trade union experience that vanished? How are these disturbances negated with time and washed away by the river into the past, silenced in memory? When did this flame ignite and how was it extinguished? Who were all these people who saw that same landscape?”

In the context of the exhibition, particularly the In Between chapter, this work adds an additional layer of meaning, using the human body as material for exploring the invisible and ever-changing political landscape.

For this work the artist collaborated with Kurdish tattoo artist, Berivan Işık. Darıcıoğlu asked for a Kurdish sentence Işık could remember from tales told by their elders, or childhood dreams, to be tattooed on their body. During the performance, Darıcıoğlu did not intervene on the choice of the sentence nor the placement of the tattoo.

Drawing from the Iranian myth of Kaveh the Blacksmith defeating the ruthless King Zahhak, Işık chose the following sentence: ‘Bi mirine ye qrale zordar bihar cardin hat!’ It means, ‘Spring came only when the tyrant king died!’ With this piece, the artist turns their body into a ‘space’ of free expression and a ‘canvas’ for those who were kept in the dark

Note: As an non-binary person, the artist prefers to take a gender-neutral pronoun rather than she/her. So when possible the artist should be referred to as they/them, to keep the gender neutral form in descriptions of bio and work

The artist’s practice presents a deep connection to her own life story, often with an intensely personal touch that focuses on the artist’s body, autobiography and confession. She states, “I am interested in life; art for me should be an experience.”

Therefore this poignant image of Emin sitting on a chair in front of Monument Valley with its spectacular rock formations in the background, reading a white book shows a notable personal journey for the artist.

In this series, she sits on her grandmother’s chair, with the words ‘Thanks mum’ written around the seat, reading from her own handmade book about the first thirteen years of her life, posing in different places across America. In a way she is ‘dislocated’ from the comforts of home, yet reminiscing on her childhood experiences. This portrays a symbolic journey of both reflection and alienation from one’s childhood.

This work echoes Long’s work England which is presented in the Location chapter of the exhibition. In both works, nature becomes subject matter as well as medium of Long’s art. This piece shows the same ‘X’ motif, this time made from flat river-bed stones in a shallow bay, which embodies the idea of a crossing. In this photograph the river surface reflects the sky and trees, showing nature in flux. Long also includes in the work lyrics by Johnny Cash:

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine,
I walk the line

I walk the line alludes to the first walking work by Long, A Line Made By Walking (1967). Analyzing relationships between time and place, presence and movement of the human being, this work, in the context of the In Between section of the exhibition, represents a constant change of things invoking the phrase attributed to Heraclitus, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice.’

The work explores a particular existential search for a way of life and the physical durational treading of a track. The work is composed of two elements, video and drawings. The video follows an unconscious yet familiar track, that appears to be guided by footprints left by another human being. The viewer follows the path through different seasons, illustrating the passage of time. In her drawings, Zvyagintseva extracts sections of the way that symbolically represent humans’ imprints on paths, including repetitions, ordeals and mistakes made. Put together, animated fragmented drawings suggest both cul-de-sacs and multiple directions of travel. In the context of the exhibition, Paths embodies persistent doubts we all have about decision-making, being in limbo and taking responsibility for the choices made, which is why this work forms part of the chapter, In Between.

Atkinson wrote of this work, “The drawing is number 11 in a series of 28 drawings called Bunker Armagh. It is therefore approaching the halfway point of the series. Even at this point the series was beginning to display some distinct tendencies of having an inevitable logic towards its own termination. This was a tendency to move towards a completely blank surface without a single mark on it. Even at this stage (drawing no.11) the reductive logic of an unmarked black surface as an appropriate simile for the ‘black hole’ intractability of Anglo-Irish history seemed to beckon uncomfortably.”

The series was eventually finished by Atkinson as drawing no 28 was completed. As Atkinson relates above, there’s a tension in the work between figurative historical references to Anglo-Irish history and the artist’s leaning towards modernist imagery. This image shows that haunting feeling of not belonging to any particular movement in a playful manner.

In this work, Chaimowicz draws on imagery from his own intimate world, glimpsed, but never fully grasped in its entirety. His use of the camera is personal and specific. The images are carefully constructed, cultured, synthetic, giving substance to the fugitive and insubstantial. The artist, author and subject of the work is always discretely present.

In Interval, images representing the artist’s internal world are juxtaposed with references to objects and places: touched with washes of colour, pressed within panes of glass, they appear as enigmatic fragments, awaiting completion. The sequence of photographs marks a personal cultural journey, mixed with nostalgic elements. This conjures up feelings of belonging, and not belonging and fragility as brittle as the window glass itself, but also sentimental, like the sepia photographs found within this work.

The artist’s photography practice is predominantly autobiographical. She captures what she sees on her camera, often reflecting her emotional connections to the subject matter. For the artist, the work connects what is seen, and what is felt, so the images reference a dream-state, or an idealized person, within the parameters of the physical realm. In this series, Leaves of Wild Waters, Saner references youth and a metaphorical journey through often blurred transitions of colour using an analogue camera. The pictures suggest glimpses of a passionate journey, one we may all hope to have experienced at least once in our lives. The images imply a feeling of belonging, but also youthful passion to leave, to conquer, to yearn and search for more experiences, and perhaps float, like leaves in wild waters.

In this work, the artist investigates self-defeating utopias; machines and systems for living that self-destruct, and urban phenomena as a mode of totemic representation. Tapan explores the juxtapositions between private, public, and spiritual spaces, through installation and live-art based practice. The ever-shifting forms of colour and light represent the In Between chapter of this exhibition. The video with its figurative and digital artifacts, hints at the story of a flower that is opening, or has not yet opened, indicative of our feelings as we move through this exhibition, observing ourselves and our current contemporary conditions.

Self-Help is the first collaborative work by İnci Furni and Leyla Gediz. The two painters set out on a long train journey from Haydarpaşa Station, which today is no longer in use. Using just a blue biro and without resorting to words, they create a nine minute dialogue, at times shaped by their jaded and anxious moods, and illustrative of their close female friendship.

Istanbul and Anatolian landscapes, and scenes of urban transformation flowing past the train window, evoke dualities such as relationships of production and consumption, metropolis and countryside, nature versus concrete, at speed and also slow. This documentary develops in front of a background of a shifting panorama of the country and allows us to observe or listen to the inner voice of two artists becoming and transforming each other, as time elapses.

Both artists manage to sustain their practice by accompanying each other during this journey, by pursuing each other’s practices, and in a sense, becoming each other’s ideal audience. Self-Help presents, within a collective structure, the personal works of two artists who strive to continue their production despite the weight of the ethical, political and social tangles of the land we live in, and brings them together in a space which itself resembles the wagons of a train.

Bridge was made by Ukrainian painter Oleg Holosiy in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It depicts a melancholic landscape with a bridge as its central motif. Painted in moss-green colours, it creates an atmosphere of reverie and anxiety.

Here, the bridge becomes a metaphor for the transition between life and death, something that connects and disconnects at the same time. One can hardly miss the historical coincidence of a falling figure depicted here, with the artist’s untimely death at the age of 27, just a year after the work was made.

In the context of the exhibition, this work embodies a human being’s constant doubts about decision-making, and hopes for a better future.

In this work, Langlands & Bell explore the complex web of relationships linking people and architecture and the programmed systems of circulation and exchange which surround us. Using laser technology, they create an ethereal work mapping the airline routes of the world etched within a block of crystal. The piece was produced in Russia using a unique process first developed during the Cold War as part of the space programme.

The title suggests a reference to the world-wide-web, or internet culture, and how we define ourselves today within the parameters of online resources. This links to the viewer experiencing this work in the digital format of this exhibition. The laser engraved lines circling inside the crystal might be a metaphor of the contemporary being, ‘free’ to move in-between places and locations, but often stuck inside the limits of borders. We can see through the glass, and the world is within our reach, but we are confined to the rules that are engraved within.

This chapter looks at artworks, which deal with the urge to escape. Artists in this section are grappling with themes of constraints and borders, whether clear or blurred. Here, works emphasise notions of separation, displacement, inner and outer space as well as familiar and re-imagined landscapes. The stories they collectively tell are intertwined together, reflecting the ways in which physical and spiritual experiences transform us. So the journey or cycle of this chapter can continue in an open-ended way.

In 2015 Telgeren collaborated for the first time with Cem Köksal, a musician and electric guitar virtuoso. Köksal produced the third edition of his custom design guitar, Shark, especially for this exhibition, and the instrument was then hand-painted by Telgeren.

For this work, she reinterpreted a drawing of her own hand from 2011. Telgeren left empty only the part where Köksal’s hand would touch the guitar, so that metaphorically the two artists creatively share this artistic space.

The artist uses different mediums in her work to portray her own journey, suggesting an existential discourse. The conceptual framework she creates allows her to portray a spiritual self-journey, through references and symbols. She uses these objects and voices during her installations and performances. In this piece, Spirit Explorer, she conducted three performances, of one hour duration, as part of the curated group exhibition In Between Pilgrim, where the idea of contemporary beings searching for a higher meaning was examined.

In this performance, Aras uses handmade glass and ceramic objects she had made and installed as an ever-changing set-piece for the duration of the performance, making sounds and movements with the objects as if they were an extension of her body. In the interactive performance, Aras conducted a ritualistic collective experience with the audience, allowing them to interact with her, and take part in this ritual as well.

This work was initiated when Richard Hamilton and Francis Bacon had lunch at a restaurant in London, during which Hamilton asked Bacon to take a few photos of him against the curtains of the dining room. Bacon’s handling of the Polaroid shots made them blurred and out of focus, which Hamilton built on in this work.

Hamilton produced a series of seven collotype prints, over-painted with oil, and let Bacon choose his favourite, the seventh one, with its vibrant violet background and heavily manipulated portraiture. Alluding to delusion and dreamlike fantasy, the portrait embodies the moment of transformation in a physical and spiritual sense.

This photo series is frequently described as an ‘exercise in domestic sublime.’ In this intimate portrait of empty bed and rumpled sheets, composed as a sculptural object, McConnell amplifies the melancholy, suggesting a sense of contemplation in the composition.

With its blue ambiance, portraying the beds as bodies, this work speaks about sickness and recovery, rest and passion, birth and death. In such instances, the minimalist depiction of an empty bed is emblematic of despair, dreams and absence.

Reflecting life, this everyday intimacy also suggests the limitlessness of surrounding space, beyond the frame.

This work is from a series where the artist refers to unconscious psychological states.

Portraits are blurred, with representations of bodies smeared across each other, acting as a visual clue to human experience. The monochrome palette used by the artist adds to a sense of emptiness and sadness, hinting at both physical and spiritual formation. Here, the time-frame is hard to understand; past, present and future interchange in zones, leading to the unknown.

Adding layer upon layer of oil paint to build texture reflects Khachaturiani’s traditional attitude to painting technique. The title of the artwork suggests a glimpse of our desire to escape and hide, or perhaps be present with an identical twin, doppelgänger or alter ego.

This work is a typical example of the artist’s painting with its familiar themes of contemporary landscape. The geometrical abstraction of horizons relates to political problems in the occupied territories of her homeland.

Giorgadze’s more recent practice transforms digital aesthetics into manual, hand-drawn paintings using conventional mediums.

Borders and wire-fences blur the background of the pictorial arrangement of the composition, whilst visually fragmented horizontal lines and pastel colours soften the aggressive and traumatic themes within this painting.

In the work, divided spaces pinpoint specific geographical locations, simulate multiple perspectives and expose digital glitches and artifacts. These flat decorative paintings, with minimal details or figures, are melancholic in their commentary, poetically referencing wider current cultural and socio-political issues.

This series was made during the revolutionary months of the Euromaidan in Kyiv in 2013-2014. Otherwise known as ‘The ‘Revolution of Dignity,’ the uprising was marked with violence, police repression and shootings by unidentified aggressors in the centre of the Ukrainian capital.

Kurmaz depicted self-made objects which were used by protesters during clashes with the police. Kurmaz removed the objects from their familiar environment, neutralising the background as if they were being photographed for an anthropological enquiry.

Taken out of context, these objects document the everyday reality of life marked by violence, aggression and displacement, as well the loss of hope. Some of the objects seem to have a sacred form, reminiscent of symbols of power or religious suffering. In terms of the Dislocation chapter of the exhibition, this series hints at state aggression that leads to physical and spiritual resistance.

This is an engraving on copperplate, with gestural drawings of houses in a residential area, separated into zones for ‘neighbours,’ ‘high fence,’ and ‘our house’.

A sense of belonging is depicted in almost childlike strokes in this simple geometric construction, against the chaotic mark-making in the ‘neighbourhood’ section, which is divided by the demarcation of a horizontal line. This alludes to a sense of belonging and to human rights, told from the author’s point of view, as he is both a Native American rights activist and a poet.

This subversive play on serious social-political issues, reflected by almost impulsive graphic forms, depicts movement and a sense of tension, referencing social constraints, isolation, discrimination, and solitude within an urban habitat.

This is one of her works on paper. Using coloured pencils, she blurs the boundaries between painting and drawing, figurative and abstract, reality and fantasy. With humour, she explores the role of hidden languages and symbols concerning feminist and conceptual questions.

In this work, Naveriani depicts location and map in the foreground, combined with a geometrically defined space in the background. In the space she then places figures such as a Playboy Bunny and a mannequin-like male portrait.

As Naveriani herself explains: ‘It is this full intuitive trust and irrational approach to the language of drawing that takes me into another, ultimate and yet unknown space with no past or future, just the intangible present and the countless possibilities to investigate and reflect on it.’

This work is from the series of artworks depicting the apocalyptic scenario of a meteorite landing on the important sites in London. Parker alters the artwork by physically embodying the paradoxical idea and actually heating up the real iron of Gibeon Meteorite, which originally fell on Namibia and was discovered in 1836 by projecting it’s trace on the map with a burn mark left by an ‘alien’ object to scratching the roads of cosmic and at the same time geographic trajectories.

The humor in the work, to ‘send a meteorite back where it came,’ has a conceptual as well as a historic reference. In her own words, “an alien object from space, the meteorite, embodies the fear of the unknown and fear of the future. In this sense, this is an apocalyptic work for the end of the millennium.”

The metaphoric dislocation of the Meteorite creates the conceptual framework of the artwork by shifting symbolic objects and power structures.

This work exemplifies the Dislocation chapter of the exhibition.

It references a famous piece by Illya Kabakov, The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment (1985) where a man flying to a phantasmagoric unknown space is looking for new hope. Golub’s work, in contrast, invites us on a journey full of irony, sorrow and subtle provocations, making us think of solitude, searching for escape and the experience of displacement.

The narrative is drawn from philosophical thinkers inspired by the cosmos - including Nikolay Fedorov, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Aleksandr Bogdanov as well as Boris Groys and Arseniy Zhilyayev.

Discussing these philosophical ideas together with the artist, her 83 year old grandmother Nadya narrates about her life on a space station, talking about her constraints and hopes as well her thinking about the future of humankind.

The piece reveals the conflict between reality, its perception, and our wishful thinking on this reality. The space station where Nadya settles becomes a metaphor for the shell of solitude, where disabled or displaced people are trying to transcend their current realities.