Performing the Border
2014-2025
Since 2014, I have been documenting different actions related to marking, crossing and embodying borders. I began this work during the Bridge Guard Art Residency in Štúrovo, where the bridge connecting Slovakia and Hungary reminded me of the bridge between Narva and Ivangorod (Estonia and Russia), a place where I grew up. This connection made me start experimenting with the camera and with my own body, leading to a series of actions in which I gradually explored how a border can be physically and symbolically embodied. In one of these actions, I use a mirror to make my body disappear, as if dissolving myself into the border itself.
In 2022, when borders became visible again in a new and more urgent way, I continued performing and documenting actions along the England–Scotland, Estonia–Latvia and Estonia–Russia borders. This video work brings together performances made over more than a decade and is shown here for the first time. Across these different places, I take on different roles and respond to what each border allows or prevents. Some borders can be crossed physically by swimming, walking or driving. Others can only be crossed through imagination, poetry or humor. Through these actions, I use my body to explore how different borders shape what we can and cannot do, and how our relationship to them changes with time and political circumstances.