Words About Travel: Hitchhiking, Moscow — Tyrnyauz, 2026

For the past several years, I have been collecting phrases in a Telegram channel: overheard conversations, quotations, and my own notes. Over time, this archive grew into three themes: travel, love, and reflections on life. While working with the travel section, I realized that one idea kept repeating—the desire to leave—so I decided to trust this impulse and hitchhike alone from Moscow to Tyrnyauz near Mount Elbrus.

The photographs document this journey and the climbing trip that followed, while the ceramic sculptures beneath them materialize memories from the road: the cars that gave me rides, objects I carried, stories told by drivers, and moments I experienced. Together, they form a chronological timeline where personal memories become physical evidence of lived experience.

During the journey I discovered that both hitchhiking and climbing are built around risk, trust, and following a route. Although the project may initially appear to tell the story of an adventure, I am interested in the tension between its playful visual language and the vulnerability that lies beneath it. Throughout the trip I printed phrases from my archive and gave them to drivers and climbers as souvenirs, turning the project into both an archive of travel and a way of creating connections through shared experiences and language.

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