Village Day

The book is based on documentary material about the village of Kucher in Udmurtia, the artist’s birthplace, which is special to her. It shows the celebration Village Day, in which residents and former residents who have returned for one day to their home village, gather at a long table, talk about life, problems, and joys, and drink, eat, sing, play, and recall the heyday of the village and their youth.

Village Day takes place on Parents’ Day, the day of remembering the dead, when people go to the cemetery and then stay for a short while. This book is about threads, connections, memory, family, and one’s roots; about how a sparsely populated, disappearing village comes back to life on the “day of the dead;” about the close links between pagan rituals and Christian traditions. The book also includes another subject connected to the artist’s family tree: archive materials which are in dialogue with the overall narrative.

The book comprises 38 unbound drawings made using India ink and accompanied by a printed text on sheets of tracing paper. The sheets are wrapped in several layers: a folder with a cutout, a sleeve for the folder, and a case for storage.

The book was created as part of the Garage Library project Single Copy.