This project started with my fascination with how recent humans actually started to identify themselves as righteously as we do now. We not only have names, surnames, middle names, age, year of birth, but citizen numbers, insurance numbers, identity card numbers, phone numbers etc. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, some people had no idea how old they were and did not even have surnames. They were required to make them up for the growing apparatus of bureaucracy.

As machines and, most importantly, data storage rapidly improved, our perception of identity also began to shift.

I found censuses to be the best material for tracing what was perceived as common knowledge about oneself, who was putting in the data, and who was reading and processing it.

And as I was drowning in archives, I realised that when ticked boxes came, suddenly census has turned from 6 questions to 6 pages of information.

This artifact is a Russian census from 2002 that I have embroidered. I wanted to appreciate how much information I am putting into these boxes. It took me 2 hours, and as I took off the paper frame, these dots and letters lost their narrative and dissolved into data.