The sudden forced emigration wrenched me from calm and comfortable life of a middle-aged architect into the one of an exile in a new land. Everything is upended here, and my task now is to navigate unfamiliar terrain and somehow find my place in this new world.

Amid all of this, I began constructing a private, fairy-tale world hidden from prying eyes, which only my two daughter has access to. The world where the boundaries of possibility dissolve, the feminine fantasyland sprung from the bedtime tales mothers weave for their children.

We don’t craft elaborate plots. We simply step into this world—up in the attic of our rented home—and take a photograph, a moment suspended in time, before slipping back out.

In our fantasyland, nothing is permanent. Everything shifts, transforms. Mother, witch, queen; daughter-girl, daughter-child, daughter-doll—each character blending into the next, caught in a constant state of transformation. There is no fixed point, only the shimmering transitions between them. And no end here, even a happy one.

Creating this project is my way of coping with the despondency and fear that come with emigration. It’s also a way to play with my daughter and to leave her with good memories of the time we spent together during this difficult period for our family.