The alien figure appears as something between a monster with a dragon’s head and a deity resembling Anubis from Egyptian mythology. This association seems far from accidental: Anubis was the god of funerary rites, which in every civilisation served as rituals for fixing and preserving memory.

This Anubis from outer space is a construction made of fabrics, with an ornament based on photographs from the family archive and still lifes containing various vegetables, fruit and elements of kitchen life. To the linear narrative of memories and events, it opposes the steady rhythm of reproduction. We should remember that the word “reproduction” means not only the copying of an image, but also biological reproduction.

This type of memory is connected to collective ritual, in which ancestors and descendants are included in the circulation of family resources. Here, history is not linear, but repeats itself with each new cycle of reproduction, in close connection with nature. A personal story can become a fragment of a monumental mosaic, where human DNA is intertwined with the DNA of plants, animals and minerals.

Next to the alien stand abstract traps — tools invented by the artist for searching for and collecting memories. Unfamiliar objects in a relative’s home can, through their strangeness, inspire a child to fix a moment and its atmosphere. Later, in adulthood, these objects become vessels for long-held sensations.

Sometimes, to remember means to drown: in details, stray fragments and, of course, trauma. Few family histories reaching back into the previous century are free from memories of cruelty, both personal and political. Kalinichenko’s two types of memory also offer two techniques of forgetting. Human memory selects only what needs to be remembered in order to keep living and not fall into despair.

The alien’s memory offers consolation through the ritual of a shared meal and the ghost of abundance — the goal and hope of every family history.