This work is both confession and testimony. It portrays the ghost of my abandoned home, left behind when I fled in December 2019. That night, armed men stormed into my life. I managed to save my family, but could not save my four dogs, killed in the violence. Their absence remains as a wound, embedded in the reflection of the house on the water’s surface.
The house itself is not painted directly but revealed as a spectral reflection in a nocturnal pond. Above it unfolds the daylight sky of France, my place of exile, while below the inverted image glows like a cathedral of memory. At the center stands a small white inverted dog, a fragile guardian between worlds. Surrounding it are nineteen radiant stars: the number of the wanderer in Kabbalah, the mark of 2019, and the precise year when exile began (Russia).
The signature FR 25 anchors the work in the present: it declares both survival and belonging in France, contrasting with the submerged trauma of the past. The green bush with new branches embodies continuity and rebirth, while the darker, violet-brown shadows of the trees and the deepened blue of the reflection root the image in grief and memory.
This dual structure transforms the painting into a meditation on exile: not only the portrait of a single night of escape, but also a universal icon of fracture between homeland and refuge, past and future, wound and dignity.
