Your Land My Land

In 2022, Maria Kapajeva filmed both banks of the Narva River from the ferry travelling between Narva and Narva-Jõesuu. The soundtrack of the video installation combines words and sounds drawn from multiple sources. Part of the text was written by Kapajeva herself while filming on the ferry, while another part comes from the lyrics of a song documented during the 1947 Narvataguse expedition.

The artist asked her nephew, Zakhar, to compose music for words once sung by their ancestors. Musician Mar Karpova then combined these elements with the melody of another folk song recorded in Zagrivye in 1981, as well as sounds captured along the banks of the Narva River. The result is a sound piece that unfolds over the course of the ferry journey, bringing together words from different centuries through different performers, and speaking, among other things, of war, the river, foreign lands, and love.