An elderly woman holding lipstick and wearing a traditional Bashkir dress smiles at the viewer in this elaborate portrait. The artist has overpainted the original photograph with flowers, a reference to her name and that of her mother, and also a sy
The subject of this piece is the wedding. Gulnara juxtaposes her own mother’s wedding, immortalized at the city hall in Ufa (while her mother was pregnant), with musicians and dancers from a wedding in the same city captured decades later.  Gul
The artist created this piece in order to recuperate the memory of her mother and also to humanize her. How would her mother look like today? This piece reveals photography’s capacity to move between present and future, prefiguring a sense of loss,
Together with her sisters, Gulnara’s grandmother (second from the left) is featured in a small photograph taken in 1947. This older work is collaged together with a more recent photograph of a group of girls happily drinking from a water fountain. T
An elderly couple wearing World War II medals posing in front of a Lenin sculpture in Ufa, Bashkortostan. The artist has superimposed a photograph of her grandmother who was a nurse during the same war. This work explores the ways in which photograp
Jewelry shopping
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Lost Family: Exploring Soviet Identity and Post-Soviet Memory Formation. This hand painted collage features a large photo of a Bashkir woman cutting a roasted duck, with a small photo collage of my my mother's official wedding picture added to the c
This piece is dedicated to Gulnara’s relationship with her mother and her childhood. A portrait of the artist’s mother and herself as a toddler hovers in the right side of the compositions. A young girl dreaming by the open window. In Gulnara’s con
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Creation of this work was prompted by Gulnara’s discovery that her mother had a brother the artist never knew existed. She collaged the small portrait of him together with a larger photograph of friends and coworkers, placing them together at the sa
This group of sailors was photographed by the artist in her native city Ufa before she left Russia to come to New York in 1992. The photograph portrays the men in their prime, smiling and looking ahead confidently. Gulnara added to the composition t
Four children pose for the camera in a modest backyard. A clothesline, overpainted in rainbow colors, frames the background. The artist also included a photograph of her mother in her youth in color. The artist, an only-child, has expressed the desi
One of the few works featuring Gulnara’s male relatives, this piece brings together the artist’s fiancée, Ruslan, and her grandfather. Both men lost their lives tragically, and this loss has left an indelible mark of sorrow on the artist’s conscious
This piece is dedicated to Gulnara’s relationship with her mother and her childhood. A young girl, whom the artists imagines as a friend who once bullied her, is captured running away from Gulnara’s portrait. A portrait of the artist’s mother hovers
The large, background photograph was taken by the artist during a trip to China. Gulnara was struck by how stern and tough the group of men and women appeared. She connected this moment to having her own photograph taken at the age of thirteen. The
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