Polina Mihajlovna Chernitskaya, Future Fragments: Dowry Beyond The Material, 2025, still image, courtesy: Nelly Robková.
What if our greatest inheritance isn't made of objects we can hold, or land we can own? What if the inheritance is mostly part of the gestures we repeat, the value we embody, and the way we learn to see the world?
In Future Fragments: Dowry Beyond The Material, leads us to think about what the exact term dowry means from our individual perspectives. Dowry represents a term that passes through cultures, religions, but the main purpose is that it is a material inheritance that represents a symbolic gesture – a gesture of goodwill from one family to another, related to tangible items, like a transfer of wealth, land, property or objects which come from the bride's family to the groom.
Polina Mihajlovna Chernitskaya expresses this very notion through the symbolic lens of the intangible dowry as a constellation of small fragments that accompany her through life's journey, ranging from the key to her father's store to a leaf pattern on the curtains, or an abandoned camera. These fragments and patterns weave her memories of her ancestors, guiding her as companions on her journey.
This symbolic lens of the intangible dowry as a constellation of small fragments leads us to rethink. What do we carry forward from this intangible legacy, as a future fragment, waiting to be discovered by someone else?
As part of Future Fragments: Dowry Beyond the Material we invite you to share your stories of dowries, intangible or otherwise, on the interactive fragment map. We welcome your thoughts, experience, and perspectives. Your contributions become part of this exhibition, creating a collective dialogue about how we value partnerships, family connections, and cultural traditions in contemporary society. Feel free to leave a sentence, symbol, question, or just a simple word about what comes to your mind in the sense of intangible dowry.
Curated by Nelly Robková
Future Fragments: Dowry Beyond the Material is a short term exhibition created in collaboration with intern through the Erasmus + programme.