where I was supposed to be

"Where I Was Supposed to Be" explores the gap between an expected life trajectory and the possibility of inhabiting it. The project is assembled from found photographs that follow a recognizable sequence of female milestones: childhood, family gatherings, school years, a beauty pageant, leisure and travel, work, a corporate event, and marriage. Together, these scenes form a familiar script of growing up and becoming a woman.

Using digital erasure, the human figures are removed from the photographs while their surroundings remain intact. The settings preserve the traces of anticipated participation: a celebration still takes place, a destination remains available, a social ritual retains its form, but the person at its centre is absent. The images no longer document individual experiences - they expose the structure of a life imagined through inherited social expectations.

The photographs are arranged in a plush-covered Soviet-style family album, a domestic object familiar to many millennials. Traditionally used to preserve personal memories, the album here becomes a container for a life that can be recognized but not fully inhabited. Its final page holds empty photo corners without an image, leaving a space for a presence that has not been recorded.

Rather than depicting a single disappearance, "Where I Was Supposed to Be" considers absence as a condition embedded in everyday life: the distance between the roles prepared for a person and the life that may - or may not - take their place.

Created by ELI, a collaborative artist duo formed by Lina Verkholantseva and Elena Voropaeva.

Exhibited:

 "Tak ne byvaet", group exhibition, CCCX х Toska, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 2026