Alexander Ugay bases his work on recollections of the Soviet era, focusing on migrant experiences and resonances of place in the collective imagination. Ugay is a third-generation member of Kazakhstan’s Koryo-saram community – ethnically Korean people forcibly transmigrated to Central Asia from their homes in Russia’s far-eastern territories under Stalinist policies in 1937.

For Obscuraton 2022, Ugay constructed a multi-aperture pinhole camera whose unconventional shapes echo stamping machines the artist operated while employed as a labourer in South Korea (factory work being the reality for many Koryo-saram who return to their ancestral homeland). By alternately opening and closing different apertures, Ugay registered geographically dispersed sites of historical and personal significance as layers of light on photosensitive paper. He first documented Dumangang River on the border between North Korea and Russia, an important crossing point for Korean migrants fleeing famine during the nineteenth century. This was overlaid with photographs of Mount Bastobe in Kazakhstan, one of the last points in their harrowing transmigration.

Presented alongside the exploded form of the camera, these layered reminders of a traumatic past acknowledge the experience of displacement and loss, while exploring the potential for new modes of belonging.