In societies shaped by ideological regimes — from the former USSR to modern-day China — fairy tales aren’t inherited but engineered. They soothe, distract, and control, appearing vivid and beautiful until the seams are touched.

My family comes from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia — identities once compressed into a single Soviet narrative. I grew up inside that tidy version of the world, sensing the quiet gaps it tried to hide.

The story continues in my motherland. Its symbols have changed, but the rhythm remains. When I return, everything feels slightly distorted, as if the country moves through a dream still being told.

This multimedia series explores that dissonance — between memory and invention, the personal and the prescribed — echoing Andersen’s fairy tales, where beauty and fear coexist and even memory grows unstable.