"How should I call you: grandmother, grandma, or granny?" was an experimental journey into reconnecting with my grandmother, who passed away 26 years ago. Her life was marked by profound challenges: battling diabetes and breast cancer, coping with an alcoholic husband, and enduring the crushing poverty inflicted by the Romanian communist regime. To bridge the emotional distance, I physically transformed myself to embody her—our shared facial features making the connection uncanny—and ventured into the village where she lived, raised two children, and eventually passed away.
The village, Lunca in Teleorman County, southern Romania, is now almost deserted. In 2019, my ailing grandfather still lived there, surrounded by fading traditions and echoes of the communist era. His passing in 2021 brought a deeper sense of loss to this journey. This project seeks to reimagine the struggles of women like my grandmother—resilient but voiceless in a society that deemed them inferior—and give their untold stories new life in a contemporary context.
