Samowar 1988 takes as its starting point a samovar that belonged to my grandmother and was brought to Germany as a present for my parents in the late 1980s. As an object associated with tea culture, the samovar evokes domesticity, hospitality and family togetherness, while also carrying ideas of cultural belonging and origin.

Against the backdrop of a German-Russian family history, the familiar object is re-covered in leather. Its spout and a 3D-printed tap take on a bodily, sexual form reminiscent of a strap-on. The family heirloom is neither preserved unchanged nor rejected, but appropriated and queered.

Origin is thus understood not as something fixed, but as something that can be altered, reinterpreted and embodied anew. The work brings familial familiarity into tension with an experience of increasing political and cultural distance.