Aziza: In my work, I try to express not pain, but optimism, which is, nevertheless, connected to processing pain. As a person — and as an artist — it is nearly impossible to dive into a state of endless melancholy and sadness. I cannot just sit overwhelmed by this feeling and contemplate. I think through solutions. How do I exist within pain? If there are limitations, how do I overcome them? Yesterday, I was listening to an interview with my grandmother that I recorded for the installation Her Stage, which I am currently working on. She sometimes mentions negative things—and laughs after every sentence. Perhaps that laughter comes from a place of trauma. “He pressed me against the wall and started groping”, my grandmother says, listing the reasons why she couldn’t become a professional dancer — and then laughs. Reading my grandparents’ diaries, I see the same attitude toward problems and potential pain throughout my family. My great-great-grandfather voluntarily gave all his property to the Soviets and smiled as he instructed everyone to “study because no one can take knowledge away from you.” There is both fatalism and “clinical” tragic optimism in this, and this approach was passed to me subconsciously. That’s why I’m drawn to art that isn’t afraid of absurdism, magical realism, and performativity; it’s a clever defense mechanism.

Milyausha: In my family, there’s a story connected to zur aslyk — the famine in the Volga region in the 1920s, which is talked about less than the Holodomor in Ukraine and Asharshylyq in Qazaqstan, probably because Bashqortostan is a part of the Russian Federation. My great-grandmother Zeynab’s first husband took the most valuable thing to exchange it for food in a distant region, not as severely affected by the famine. The most valuable item was a carpet. He never returned home.

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Everyone likely has stories in their families of their great-grandmothers surrendering their traditional treasures. Bashqorts first witnessed this during the tractor reform in the late 1920s when money was being raised for tractors. I found a video showing a woman in luxurious national attire, with chest jewellery and a headdress, approaching a table where two foremen in jackets are sitting. She takes off all her jewellery and hands it over. Everyone applauds. The same thing happened during World War II when jewellery was collected for the front's needs. Some masters still say they are afraid to show their treasures to anyone, such as when reenactors or ethnographers visit them. In my region, in the southwest of Bashqortostan, few people wear anything now. Some even say we never had national clothes or jewellery, although, in reality, all the treasures were given away for Soviet reforms. And this is also part of my history. When you tell it, and share it, it feels like this burden is being lifted.

Darali: When we discuss the problems of Indigenous peoples, I do not feel pain, but anger. It’s multilayered. It even feels like a disappointment, irritation mixed with indifference. If you want everything to be bad — don’t do anything, don’t speak your native language, don’t practice crafts, that’s your choice! What angers me is powerlessness, apathy, and inattention to what’s happening in culture right now, in contemporary art. To avoid losing energy, I try to communicate with different people — those outside of Udmurt culture — who might be going through similar processes. I try to do what I can, as much as I can.