Displacement raptures one’s reality and creates a sense of discontinuity. This bottomless void is impossible to fill. No matter how hard one tries to assimilate, adapt to, or adopt the new life – something is still missing. You know you don’t belong. You don’t belong here, and you don’t belong there. The only place you belong is the gap you cannot fill. As a chronic disease, it never goes away, and you must learn how to live with it.

Some try to recreate their homeland in a new place and remain closely connected with other members of their diaspora, creating a quasi-word similar to virtual reality. You can notice that time never changes in such enclaves, it froze at the moment of their creation. Some imagine the old life has never happened to them – it was just a (bad) dream they woke up from. They build a wall around their past, discourage their children from speaking their language, and minimize all contact with people who share the same background. And a myriad of combinations in between – with the same goal to cope with the void that cannot be filled.

Being physically disconnected, first-generation immigrants rarely can break the mental and emotional bond with their homeland. The artists in the show came from different yet similar backgrounds. Both Iran and Russia are known as totalitarian states, both are coming through events that can potentially heal or break them forever. The magnitude of these movements shakes the very foundation of the new immigrant reality and builds up the pressure on its walls.

The show creates a space of silence, a soundproof refuge that allows time and place to process the emotional storm. It reflects the two aspects of this process: restless chaos and slow meditation. Motlagh creates space for contemplation and slowness, and Sitnikov brings ruins of the past into the space to dissect and reassemble it.

Laleh Motlagh (b. Tabriz, Iran) is a Chicago-based artist and educator. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, Italy, and Iran. She was the 2022-23 BOLT resident at Chicago Artist Coalition. She was previously artist-in-residence at Nature, Art, and Habitat Residency (Taleggio Valley, Italy), Kunsthalle Bellow (Techentin, Germany), Institut für Alles Mögliche (Berlin, Germany), and House of Nature (Wald, Germany). She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2021. As an Iranian Azerbaijanis-American woman, Laleh Motlagh explores concepts of love, intimacy, spirituality, trust, and resilience while remaining present in her localities. Based in Chicago, Motlagh challenges socio-cultural alienation and interrogates the complexities of multicultural identity. Often collaborative with non-humans, Motlagh’s work includes drawing, painting, performance, video, and installation that questions both the boundaries between human and natural life, the admissible and the taboo, as well as the geopolitical overtones found so prevalently in the discourse of border zones and notions of belonging.

Anastasia Sitnikov (b. Moscow, Russia) is a Chicago artist and educator. Born at the very end of the Cold War era, Sitnikov experienced a period of turbulence between the USSR and new Russia, which shaped her interest in utopian and dystopian ideas. Her art is much driven by the curiosity about human nature and social relations as a representation of inner self and outer world, subconscious and conscious, correspondingly. Sitnikov creates large-scale installations to illustrate, activate, and explore these ideas. Like many of us, she tries to understand other people through her own experience and find common ground that can make our coexistence more meaningful and enjoyable. Sitnikov holds an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a master’s degree in Management from the State University of Management, Moscow, Russia. Her work has been exhibited at educational institutions, and non-profit and commercial galleries in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Anastasia was a Fall 2021 Artist in Residence at the International Museum of Surgical Science (IMSS), Chicago.