Piruza Khalapyan
Mental Hospital (2018)
This story is not about space, it’s about the memory of the space, which is not mine. ‘The place (the space) has its memory’ and depending on how you emerge there, how you comprehend the space, what kind of mind state you have, it begins to live inside you. You turn that space into your own and create your story. You begin to argue with yourself to find out whose history that is.
Isn’t there a place where the photographer desires to appear in the back of their mind? Their thoughts go farther, and it seems they already see the framed shots – all ready. And suddenly you appear in front of a four-story, Soviet building in red tuff, which has a sign – ‘Mental Hospital’ – on it.
Empty rooms with vividly colored walls, with dilapidated old doors, barred windows, and with things spread everywhere. My anxiety goes deeper. The heavy air and my persistent struggle for my being here. Every other room becomes a trial for me that add to each other and turn into a dialog with myself. It’s already several days people have left this place and left behind all those things, which they had wanted to be liberated from, which was already unusable, old-fashioned.
I photographed the project with my Nikon D800 using double exposure. This allowed me to create dialogue between lost memories and empty space by combining the visual layers. I’m an author of that dialogue. And it’s my illusion.
