MY HOME IS…

A home is built to hold still – this one doesn’t. In Lyu Chirkova’s London debut, domestic space exists in a constant state of adjustment, shaped by movement, interruption, and repair. Born in Mozhga, Udmurt Republic, and having moved through Kazan, St Petersburg, Tbilisi, Paris, and now London, Lyu’s life has been shaped by constant relocation. My Home Is… takes that experience as its starting point, unfolding within the gallery as a temporary home and working site. Nothing here is settled; stability is always provisional. Works are assembled, dismantled, and reconfigured in response to an environment that never fully rests, reflecting the ongoing process of finding and reconfiguring home. During her month-long residency at Roha Gallery, Lyu transforms found and domestic objects into unstable sculptural forms. A suitcase, a rocking horse, a carpet from her childhood home, an old dollhouse – all appear familiar, even playful, yet subtly misaligned. Luggage layered with international power adapters and tangled cords becomes an object built for connection but never fully resolved. A candy-coloured rocking horse, sharpened with spikes and nails, suggests movement that persists despite discomfort. A fragmented Soviet-era wall carpet, remade not from yarn but from plastiline, stretches across the space as a distorted landscape, where decoration slips into unease. Childhood imagery, characteristic of Lyu’s broader practice, runs throughout the exhibition not as sentimentality, but as reflective nostalgia – lingering and fragmented. These art objects do not restore a sense of home. Instead, they operate within the uncanny: domestic forms that no longer reassure, interiors that must be constantly adjusted to remain inhabitable. Working across sculpture, installation, video, sound, and design, Lyu’s visual language is bold, sugar-coated, and psychologically sharp. In her world, kitsch functions as a survival strategy and bright colour becomes armour. Suspended in an in-between state, the exhibition resists resolution, proposing home not as a place but as a condition – adaptable and continually redefined. My Home Is… anything, everything, and always in the process of becoming.