Xenia Nikolskaya: The House My Grandfather Built

Part of the exhibition is based on a journey the photographer and her mother undertook in 2012 from Moscow in the west to Kolyma in the east. Together, they revisit the mother’s birthplace and places where both her grandparents worked. The grandfather was placed in a labor camp, and the grandmother worked as an acclaimed geologist for the state mining company. The exhibition is as much a discovery of a history for the visitor as it is for Xenia Nikolskaya herself, who through the process discovered an unknown part of her past.

After Stalin’s death, the family returned to Leningrad, where the grandfather built a summer house that became the family’s gathering place over the years. In the gallery room, the house is represented in real scale to recreate the place where Nikolskaya’s search began.

Program and activities

February 7, 6:00 PM
Guided tour of the exhibition with Xenia Nikolskaya

March 10, 6:00 PM
Conversation between Stefan Ingvarsson and Xenia Nikolskaya
Based on Nikolskaya’s exhibition, the conversation moves through time and space, touching on the house the grandfather built, the Gulag, Siberia, and other places.

Xenia Nikolskaya (1973) received the Swedish Photo Book Prize in 2021 for The House My Grandfather Built. She has an MA from the St. Petersburg Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and a PhD from the University of Sunderland. Nikolskaya has also studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and has a curatorial degree from St. Petersburg State University.

Stefan Ingvarsson is an analyst at the Centre for East European Studies and former cultural attaché in Moscow. Before that, he was artistic director of the international festival Stockholm Literature at Moderna Museet.

The conversation is a collaboration with Tempo Documentary Festival.