I just knew… She’s been with me ever since

WOAK Gallery, Poland, 2017

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The exhibition brings together various works I have developed between 2013-2016 looking at the cultural and gender stereotypes of ‘Russian’ women using match-making services as a case study for it. While living in the UK, as a Russian-speaker, I observed lots of unpleasant and controversial comments about women from post-Soviet territories. They led me to start my research on, so called, ‘Russian Bribes’, mail-order brides service for men i mostly from Western countries, such as UK, Germany and Austria. 

In the exhibited works I explored the marketing strategies of the match-making services, which approach their female customers in Russian and their male customers in English very differently. With this exhibition I offer a look at the complexity of cultural, gender and class representations on the matchmaking websites including a real story of a woman, who married to a British man using these services.