Invisible Women

‘Invisible Women.
2025
Photography, digital printing, collage.

Not so long ago I learnt the story of the family history of architect Andrey Dmitrievich Kryachkov and Lyubov Vladimirovna Karpinskaya. Lyubov Vladimirovna came from a famous Siberian family of mining engineers. Her father was governor of the Tomsk region, and she herself, having grown up, received an excellent education, was active and energetic. She married at the age of 20, gave birth to four children, and was a support to her husband all her life, drawing, printing and proofreading. All this was told by her granddaughter Amata Evgenievna Strebkova; there is no information about her in other sources.

Women traditionally occupy secondary roles in the shadow of men: muse, helper, mother.

In this work, I bring women to the foreground, making them real and tangible, using personal items that belonged to the residents of Lyubov Vladimirovna's house, which later became a communal one. Everyday objects emphasise the significance of each individual. In the background, I place portraits of women from different eras who have been left unnoticed and who become archetypal heroines in the theme of gender inequality in a patriarchal society.