al-yené vinokurova

al-yené is an artist born and raised in the Sakha republic. She works across different media, but mostly with video and poetry. Her practice is focused on continuity, displacement, gaps and absences within sakha cultural memory. 

COUSIN will commision her project “tyynnaah keries,” tracing the historical frameworks that shaped the memory of the Sakha people, taking as a starting point ethnographer’s work of Vaclav Seroshevsky, who was exiled and placed in the remote region of Kolyma in 1883 in the house of al-yené’s ancestors. The weaved and living memories have become fixed into certain narratives to conform to the imperial archives. how colonial archives might be repurposed to allow new discourses to emerge? Is there a space to re-enliven those memories creating fictional pockets of history where one could detach from the fixed narratives?