walkthrough memory lane

walkthrough memory lane is a recent video work of mine that references the fragmented nature of memory in an age where digital realities increasingly replace physical ones. In this piece, personal memories intertwine with virtual landscapes, and the concept of “real” becomes elusive, if not entirely inaccessible.

The work incorporates archival family footage from my hometown Dnipro, Ukraine, with digital environments reminiscent of home. The virtual spaces - captured through Google Street View, first-person shooter video games, and real combat footage - merge with the warmth and nostalgia of analogue VHS tape noise and low-resolution pixels. This layering blurs the boundaries between what is real and what is fabricated, mirroring the distortions that occur in memory as it adapts to a world dominated by digital mediation.

By combining personal archives with digital media, walkthrough memory lane portrays how memory is reconstructed in contexts where physical spaces and realities are often inaccessible. Since 2014, the Russian occupation of Crimea has severed my physical connection to a place that profoundly shaped my identity. My only access to it has been through family archives and digital tools like Google Street View. Today, in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion of my home country, this sense of disconnection has deepened. Places, people, and objects once within reach now exist only in the realm of memory, further distanced by time and circumstance.

The use of virtual landscapes in this work evokes a sense of longing and dislocation, while the juxtaposition with archival family imagery mirrors the fragility and unreliability of memory itself. This work reflects on the ways memory adapts, fragments, and distorts as it interacts with new digital frameworks. It raises questions about how we preserve our histories in an era of shifting realities: When home becomes a virtual construct and the past is viewed through layers of digital interference, what happens to the authenticity of our memories?

Varvara Uhlik was part of Face-to-Face: Arles Edition 2024.

Check out her Artist Feature Sunshine, How Are You?