Voids, traces, bullet wounds

Lia Dostlieva is an artist, cultural anthropologist, and essayist. Her primary areas of interest are memory and identity. In her practice, she combines anthropological research with artistic methods to produce both artworks and critical essays. As an artist, she employs a wide range of media — from installations to textile sculptures with a particular emphasis on post-photographic practices. She works a lot with collective memory, traces of mass traumas in visual culture, and conflicting identities — with a particular focus on the 20th and 21st centuries.

What remains from a historical trauma in behavioral patterns of the contemporary generation? Which traces of the past events can be found in the family photography practices? And how to work with the notion of historical trauma in times when history seems to repeat itself? How to talk about distant events when new atrocities are happening right now?