“Under Unknown Circumstances”, Red Carpet Showroom, Volkstheater, Vienna, 2020

Photos by Elizaveta Kapustina

The installation is based on old postcards and photographs, continuing Ostrovskaya’s long-standing engagement with historical imagery as a medium for communicating with the past. She reconstructs prewar Viennese interiors sourced from glass negatives in the Austrian National Library — rooms that were destroyed in wartime and survive only as photographic traces. Into these reconstructed spaces she introduces new protagonists, inventing narratives that fill the gaps of history. The characters, drawn from real historical figures, are reimagined to comment on contemporary concerns. Animals appear as symbolic companions, echoing classical painting traditions. The resulting world is a parallel reality assembled from archival fragments.