UTOPIA
by Mikhail Durnenkov
by Mikhail Durnenkov
Reading it felt like turning back and seeing the same landscape I thought I had left behind. The same poverty, the same broken dreams, the same circles that repeat again and again. Nothing changes. Nothing gets better.
That realization filled me with both sadness and recognition.
One of the deepest inspirations for me was the photograph Dmitry Markov. His images are full of forgotten people — those who are invisible, who live outside of history, outside of progress. People who remain the same whether it is the 1990s or the 2020s. Different decades, but the same courtyards, the same hopelessness.
At the heart of Utopia is repetition — a myth that plays itself again and again. The characters fight, they hope, they destroy, but the story can never end differently.
The costumes are tokens of this return: a sailor shirt that has survived decades, a red dress glowing like a memory, like an unfulfilled dream, a leather jacket heavy with the ghosts of the 90s.
Each of these pieces comes back, again and again, like a ritual that cannot be broken.
Each of these pieces comes back, again and again, like a ritual that cannot be broken.
This is a photograph of me as a child with my beloved grandmother Galya in Russia in the 1990s.
Now, almost 25 years later, I am here in America, able to speak about part of my culture and my roots. Utopia for me is both memory and witness — a way to give voice to forgotten people and to acknowledge the cycles that still surround us.
Now, almost 25 years later, I am here in America, able to speak about part of my culture and my roots. Utopia for me is both memory and witness — a way to give voice to forgotten people and to acknowledge the cycles that still surround us.
