For more than twenty five years, Ksenia Galiaeva has been photographing her parents in the seemingly paradisiacal surroundings of her family’s Russian summerhouse in an attempt to influence her own memory and her family history. Due to her parents’ advanced age and the Russian war in Ukraine, Galiaeva is drawing this long-term project to a close with a book, an audiobook, a film, and a film installation in four parts.
In Unreal Estate the Book, Ksenia Galiaeva brings together the autobiographic stories that have always been present as background and driving force of her work, without being fully told, as well as a photographic collection made from 1997 to 2022.
This film and book project, an extension of Galiaeva’s photographic oeuvre, concludes the long period of working with her parents and is an ode to her characters and their history, which have shaped her as a person and artist, the only child of two Holocaust and labor camp survivors, and an ethnic mix of five nationalities (Jewish, Polish and German, Tatar and Russian) and four religions.
Unreal Estate the Book
18 stories and over 100 photos by Ksenia Galiaeva
‘Favorite Things’ introduction: Ellen Rutten
graphic design: Jin & Park (Jin Dallae & Park Woohyuk)
text editing: Hannah Vernier & Felix van de Vorst
printing: Top Process, Seoul
Size: 120×198 mm, hardcover, 208 pages.
Language: English
Edition: 500
Price: € 35
Publisher: Ksenia Galiaeva
Isbn: 978-90-81485-92-0
Unreal Estate the Audiobook
stories and voiceover: Ksenia Galiaeva
music: Joachim Badenhorst
sound design: Sergio González Cuervo.
Length: ~40min (streaming, downloading via Bandcamp)
Unreal Estate the Movie Trailer
Unreal Estate the Book was made possible with generous support from The Mondriaan Fund, Elisabeth Vermaat Müller Fonds/Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, Jaap Harten Fonds, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Korea.
