polina barskaya

I was born in Cherkassy, Ukraine in 1984 when it was still part of the Soviet Union. When I was four years old my family immigrated to the United States as political refugees. The trip took about 9 months as we moved through Slovakia, Austria, Italy and then onto America.
I grew up in Brighton Beach, a predominantly Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn, spending most of my days at my grandparents houseMy reality was defined by Old World Soviet mentality and New World American values and freedoms. This culture clash made me very aware of how people act when immersed in an unfamiliar society: the majority of my neighborhood's residents underwent a displacement similar to my own.
My current work focuses on family. The individual in relationship with others becomes the conceptual framework, containing the multitude of experiences and psychologies of that character.