I was born in a small ocean town in the Russian Far East — the kind of place where you walk down to the shore after a storm and come back with scallops. My grandfather raised a bear cub somebody had abandoned, and years later he bred sled dogs. My mother never stopped working. My father fought his own weather.
At eighteen I took the train to Moscow to study communication design. My first paying job was a copy centre — banners, business cards, passport photos. Then a train across Europe with my sister, then a pandemic, then a war three days before my birthday. I packed one bag and I have been packing it ever since.
I still design. I just do it from a different window every few months.
