My Home Was Here (2023) is a collaborative performance by Maria Bezuglaya and Maria Motyleva, in which the two artists invite the audience to reflect on what one is left
with when forced to leave one’s own home. What is lost forever and what can be reassembled? What is to be done when life gets shattered and how to tend the wrecks of the past? While artist’s reflection is primarily conditioned by their own experience of being citizens of a country that unleashes an iniquitous war against its neighbor and forces those
who disagree out of its premises, it also speaks to many others, from all corners of the world, who unwillingly leave their land in pursuit of freedom and dignity. “Home” here is
approached both as a physical place that can become inaccessible and as a metaphor that speaks of a number of social, cultural, and emotional anchors that serve as our individual beacons on the rugged path of life and are particularly hard to retrieve if lost.
My Home Was Here emerges through the encounter of two artistic techniques — ceramic and needlework — that are used not only to create new forms but also to mend what was broken in an intensely personal and poetic way. The performance takes place in a distinctive venue — an old and abandoned family house in Estrela, yet another lost home that is revived, even if temporarily, with our presence.
