A series of collage works inspired by my childhood love for Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale. An old copy of the book, which has been passed down through three generations of my family, was recently brought from my grandmother’s house. The half-falling-apart book, with children’s drawings in the margins and vivid illustrations, held together with tape and bearing the marks of time, took me back several decades and reminded me of who I once dreamed of becoming. I was born in Shymkent, one of the driest regions, far from any large body of water. From childhood, the image of the Little Mermaid existed for me as a space of imagination; having never seen the sea until my teenage years, I liked to lock myself in the bathroom and sing, imagining myself as the heroine of a fairy tale, creating my own artificial water world. In my work, just as I did back then, I transport the image of the sea into an everyday context. All the photographs used in the collages were taken within the confines of a tiny bathroom.