Nostalghia, 2026

Taisiia, diptych / Chromogenic prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х44см, images 10x10cm

Taisiia, Portrait, Single / Chromogenic print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х40см, image 13.5x13.5cm

Khristofor and Ivan, diptych / Chromogenic prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х44см, images 10x10cm

Valeria and Taisiia, Diptych II / Chromogenic prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х44см, images 10x10cm

Taisiia, single / Chromogenic print on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х40см, image 13.5x13.5cm

Khristofor and Ivan, diptych II / Chromogenic prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х44см, images 10x10cm

Valeria and Taisiia, diptych / Chromogenic prints on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Deep Matte Velvet, Mounted / sheet 35.5х44см, images 10x10cm

The title is borrowed, and intentionally misspelled. “Nostalghia” is the word Andrei Tarkovsky introduced to name something heavier than homesickness: a consuming love for one’s homeland, inseparable from the grief of being far away from it.

This work was made in Russia in 2026, four years into living with that feeling. I moved to Britain in 2022. In the years that followed, my relationship with home became something I could no longer describe with a simple label. Love was still there, but so was shame, and a kind of ugliness I had never expected to feel.

In January 2026, I photographed a boy in a Russian village. He had recently lost his brother to suicide. When I met him, he was wearing his brother’s clothes: a coat several sizes too large, a hat, boots his small feet were drowning in. He tried to smile for the camera. He couldn’t. Standing in front of me was a child covered in things too big for his age, in every sense.

In the months that followed, I kept returning to that image. It became a symbol of a feeling no child should have to carry: the burden of something too large for them to bear. And yet, children often encounter what they should never have to encounter. They move forward anyway.

When I began working on this project, I knew costume would be central to it. I collaborated with a theatre and film costume designer who assembled pieces from different moments in history: archival garments from Soviet cinema, films about Tsarist Russia, and contemporary clothing, creating a deliberate sense of timelessness. People in contemporary Russia might recognise clothes similar to those worn by their mothers, grandmothers, or great-grandfathers in these images.

The shoot took place on Willow Sunday - unplanned, but in retrospect impossible to ignore. In Russia, Willow Sunday falls one week before Easter, when people walk the streets carrying willow branches and women in headscarves make their way to church. The weather that day was exactly as it appears in so many Russian paintings: a dark grey sky, sharp golden light, rain, wind, and snow, all at once. It lasted the entire day. Before and after, there was nothing like it for months.

In these photographs, I chose to honour time and movement: the way wind reshapes a figure mid-frame, the way children who had never met before began to find one another, the way the light kept shifting.

Nostalghia is composed of seven works - diptychs and single images, in colour and black and white - mounted and presented together.

© 2026 Nina Prokofieva. All photographs and content are the exclusive property of the artist and may not be used, copied, or reproduced without prior written consent.