And the sun became black as sackcloth and the moon became red as blood
I was born in Russia in 1994. It was a traumatic period following the collapse of the USSR, known as the “wild nineties.” Although I was a child, this decade left a deep imprint on me.
I remember well stepping over bodies of drug addicts sprawled on the stairwell. How syringes they used crunched underfoot during my walks near the house. The way grandma used to scare me with stories about rapists. How on New Year’s Eve, guys walked around with broken noses and spat blood. The unpredictability felt when seeing the chaotic trajectory of a car driven by drunks. The demonic symbols painted on the windows of the sectarians’ apartment. How I hid in the corner when the doorbell rang because that’s how the scenes of murders and robberies began in the series. Crime shows played one after another on TV. For some, they fueled fears, for others—aggression.
The pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion formed during the 90s became a part of my identity and still manifest in me, even though I’ve lived far from Russia for six years. But what if qualities inherent not only to victims but also to aggressors have seeped into me? Studying my own blind spots, I fear stumbling upon a monster nurtured in the nineties. The greatest threat to me is not diving into the frightening memories of that time, but the risk of encountering inside myself an aggressor generated by that era.
Trying to identify areas of uncertainty within myself, I come across the universal mechanism of unpredictability: the external environment influences us in ways that are impossible to foresee.
Anna Guseva (1994) is a visual artist, born in Russia and living in France since 2018. Moving to a French village and immersing in a new social environment prompted Anna to analyze the nature of intercultural communication. Having been born a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Anna also explores the topics of difficult past, collective trauma and its impact on the formation of personal self-identification.
