This project began as a personal attempt to understand what femininity means to me. Over time, I became interested in looking beyond the familiar ideas surrounding it and asking what they conceal, what they protect, and what they reveal. The project touches on pressure, expectation, and internalized shame while asking a simple question: Who are we when we no longer need to protect ourselves?
The title comes from a children's storytelling game that was popular across the post-Soviet world. Every spooky story began with the words "In a Black-Black City..." My project imagines the opposite. A White-White City becomes an imaginary place where women no longer need to defend their nature. It is a place where femininity can unfold freely, like a warm inner light that does not try to change anyone but simply illuminates.
In reality, this light behaves in many different ways. It can be soft and comforting, but it can also blind, leave blind spots, overexpose parts of our experience, or break into reflections. The way it behaves depends on what a woman has lived through: shame around her own desires, pressure to meet other people's expectations, losing touch with herself, or struggling with self-acceptance. Throughout the project, light becomes an active presence. It reflects what is happening to each woman rather than simply illuminating her.
The project is also about reconnecting with femininity through relationships with other women. I am interested in how women see one another, and how femininity can emerge through shared experience rather than predefined images.
I am drawn to ideas that exist somewhere between clear definitions. Is naivety a form of immaturity, or is it the ability to trust? When does tenderness become confused with self-sacrifice? Why is an open heart so often mistaken for a lack of boundaries?
As an artist, I also feel vulnerable speaking about femininity. The subject is often surrounded by assumptions before the conversation even begins. This project is my way of returning to personal experience and allowing uncertainty, tenderness, and contradiction to exist without needing to resolve them.
