Natasha Romanova
T
Prewinter
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Natasha’s childhood and youth
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Natasha was born in Moscow on 16 November 1992. The Russian language has a special word for that time of year. It is called predzim’ye, literally “pre-winter” or the threshold of winter.
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It happened in the darkness of a late-autumn night, although in summertime it would already have been sunrise. The predzim’ye brings autumn cyclones, which scatter a thin blanket of snow on the ground. The real Russian winter is yet to come and this early snow often melts, but in these November
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days nature loves to adorn the earth with a thin, snowy blanket.
The autumn cyclone had chosen to coincide with a great miracle in our family: my eldest daughter Irina gave birth to a wonderful little girl. We were all very happy, and nature celebrated the girl’s arrival by sending night-time snow. The snowflakes swirled and floated slowly to the ground, as if laying a carpet to welcome the newborn princess.
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When Irina and her daughter left the maternity hospital I moved to Irina and Sergei’s flat, which was in Moscow’s Kuzminki District, and for almost two weeks I travelled from there to my work. Young mothers need help in the weeks after the birth of their children. This was the most important thing for me at that time—other concerns took second place.
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Time passed and I used to come and babysit my granddaughter, who was given the beautiful name, Natalia. I have always loved the song Nathalie with its romantic melody, particularly as performed by the French-Armenian singer, Charles Aznavour.
Moscow had celebrated its 845th anniversary in September 1992 just a couple of months before Natasha was born.
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It so happened that, many years earlier, in 1947, just after the War, Moscow celebrated 800 years since its foundation, and Natasha’s great-grandfather, Boris Konstantinovich, a colonel in the border troops, received a commemorative medal from the government in honour of the event.
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In 1992, another anniversary year for Moscow, Natasha’s grandmother, Lyudmila Borisovna, was awarded a commemorative medal for her good work and in honour of the city’s 845th anniversary.
So our family now has two commemorative medals.
I celebrated my fiftieth birthday in 1992, in our family and at work,
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but the best gift came from my eldest daughter, Irina, who gave birth to my first granddaughter. I remember, long before, listening with my husband when we were both young to the song, “You’ll be a gran one day, but your charm won’t go away.” It seemed so distant at the time. But the years pass at their own pace and bring us gifts that are especially precious.
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Children need special care in the year before their first birthday and Natasha’s parents asked me to come and look after her. We played with lots of toys. We would sit on the carpet and I would point to a teddy bear and pretend it was talking, growling or squeaking like a mouse. Natasha would take the bear and pretend it was growling in a low voice and then repeat after me how it squeaked.
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Natasha’s favourite activity was playing with rubber toys when she was being washed in the bathtub.
Playing with water was also a big part of the time we spent together at the dacha in the summertime.
Natasha was born in the 1990s. After perestroika and the collapse of the USSR, Russia went through some difficult years, which affected the lives and health of people in many families.
All sorts of problems arose.
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In our family, Natasha developed trouble with her ears which led to hearing problems after a very severe throat infection.
How could this have happened? The doctor treated the infection, which caused a high temperature,and must have missed the inflammation in the ears, or the wrong antibiotics and medications were used.
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The family was very upset, but I always said that we must pull ourselves together and work. We all did everything we could to help Natasha.
The girl soon stood up on her legs, learnt to walk, and liked to play with blocks and particularly with counting sticks.
In 1993, my youngest daughter Anya gave birth to a baby boy, Kolya. One summer day, Natasha and Kolya were outdoors in the bathtub
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when they noticed a redcurrant bush growing next to the bathtub. Without leaving their bath, they reached for the berries, picked them and ate them with evident enjoyment. Natasha’s father, Sergei, watched them and said: “Look at them having their bath while eating berries—they are mixing business with pleasure.”
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The years passed and two other children, Andrei and Ksenia,were born. In the summer, half of the plot around the dacha was a playground with sand for making shapes and building castles.
The neighbour’s children would come and join in, and there would be fun and noise.
One day, a girl from a dacha further away joined our merry company.
Natasha had hearing problems, so her speech was not very clear. She tried to pronounce letters carefully when speaking, but sometimes, when she was enjoying herself and knowing that we would understand her, she spoke quickly and not very clearly.
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The new girl heard Natasha speak for the first time and asked why she didn’t pronounce her words clearly. Kolya walked right up to the girl, shielding Natasha as if protecting her, and said loudly and angrily: “Our Natasha will learn to speak well with the help of gestures, but you will never learn how to do that. Go away, we don’t want to play with you!”
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Once, Natasha and Kolya asked me to go with them to the forest to pick mushrooms. I chose a route along the edge of the forest that didn’t take us too far from home. We went past centuries-old fir and pine trees. The children wore trousers and long-sleeved shirts because there were a lot of mosquitoes there.
We were walking along the path by the forest, picking mushrooms, when I noticed a strange hole with some sticks in it.Our neighbour’s children had built a hut in a tree nearby. Suddenly, a swarm of wasps flew out of the hole and towards us.
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I understood at once that if I took the children by the hand and ran away from the wasps, the children would be the first to be stung...
I shouted to Kolya, “Take Natasha by the hand and run along the path back to the house.” Kolya grabbed Natasha’s hand tightly and they ran quickly, with me following behind them, sweeping the wasps from the children’s backs and shoulders with my bare hands. The wasps flew onto my hands and I swatted them away to the right and left. When we got clear of the forest, the wasps fell way and went back to their nest.
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I knew why the wasps were so aggressive and why they attacked us—the neighbour’s children had made a hut for themselves and they probably wanted to chase the wasps away, so they disturbed their nest with sticks. When we came near, the wasps thought we meant them harm, so they attacked us. But we were just walking peacefully in the forest—we suffered for no reason.
We went home and treated the wasp stings. The children had a couple of nasty stings each, and I had ten minor stings on the back of my hands and my legs
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and five severe stings on each side. With treatment, the wounds healed quickly, and there were no serious consequences.
But it was a lesson to the children that they had to be careful in life, especially when they went into the forest.
In the summer, around the dacha, young mothers would walk with their children by the forest, along paths and roads between the huge fields, which had been sown with wheat, rye and oats in Soviet times.
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Mothers and children would go out in the evening, at sunset, to admire the scenery, often on roller skates or bicycles.
At the end of summer, when we were moving from our dacha back to Moscow, the children who were sitting in the car and looking out of the window waved their arms and shouted, “Goodbye, dacha, goodbye forest, goodbye field!”
It was very touching.
On Fridays in the summer a special bus took us from the train station to our dacha.
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People who were already there would turn out to meet the new arrivals. The mothers and children coming to meet us on bicycles made me feel very happy.
Riding on their bicycles east from the dacha, along a road that passed through endless wheat fields, the children went to a big pond surrounded by trees and raspberry bushes. It was said that there used to be an old estate there.
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If we walked along the forest road to the north of the dacha, we came to the edge of the forest, where a majestic hundred-year-old oak tree grew. Natasha was the first to try and climb the tree so she could look back across the fields. The children seemed to draw energy from the countryside around them. To the west of the dacha, the road ran through a forest of fir trees and came out at a birch grove, where a three-hundred-year-old oak tree grew. We formed a circle around it, joining hands, and made wishes.
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In 1995–1996 we built a large house on the dacha plot and there were lots of scraps of boards and plywood left over from the construction work. Natasha and the other children thought of ways of using them to make furniture for dolls and benches for herself.
When we went for walks in the forest, the children got acquainted with the animals and birds that lived there. They watched woodpeckers and saw squirrels jumping between the pine trees. Once we saw a grey hare running through the forest. We taught the children how to make sure that they didn’t get lost.
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I remember August 1998. Irina didn’t come mushroom picking with us, as she was expecting a baby girl in the autumn. Natasha’s father, Sergei, drove us to the forest, which is thick and overgrown. We knew we must be careful not to stray too far away from each other.
I noticed that as soon as we entered the forest to pick mushrooms, Anya (Andrei and Kolya’s mother) took Natasha by the hand and didn’t let go of her until the end of our walk, to make sure that she didn’t get lost in the forest.
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In the summer of 1999, we meant to go to Crimea where a paediatrician was to carry out a massage of the inside of Natasha’s ears, but fate intervened: Anya, the mother of Andrei and Kolya, was killed in a car accident. We moved to the dacha at the end of June and only went to Crimea in September. While we were there the children enjoyed swimming in the sea, eating fruit, relaxing and sunbathing. In the evenings, they loved to go to the playground, ride on swings and roundabouts, climb ladders, and then watch the beautiful sunset over the sea.
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The 1990s had heaped yet another tragedy on our family, leaving two boys without a mother at an early age.
My grandchildren had two mothers, but unfortunately, only one of them—my eldest daughter Irina—was left alive. She had to bear so many problems and worries on her young, fragile shoulders. Now, looking back at that time, I am amazed by how we overcame our own grief in order to surround the little children with love and care. The sorrow affected all of us, but it was particularly hard for the young boys.
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Irina organised trips to the sea and to the Volga region and prepared the children for school.
Also, when the weather was good, we took the children to the River Protva that flows not far from our dacha. We taught them to swim and even caught fish with a rod and a net.
Before we had an inflatable paddling pool at the dacha, we made a substitute for the children by digging two shallow ditches,lining them with plastic sheeting and filling them with water. The heat of the sun made the water nice and warm.
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Natasha, Kolya, and Andrei bathed in this improvised pool, while Ksenia sat in a big basin of warm water and played with rubber toys.
Natasha was very observant and curious as a young girl. She often invented ideas for games with other children, and children enjoyed playing with her.
Once, Natasha took a basin, put it in the water and she and Kolya tried to climb into it.
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It turned over, but the children tried again, and so they went on for quite a long time with lots of laughter and merriment.
When we dug a well in the garden plot there was a lot of clay left over and Irina encouraged the children to be creative. They moulded dishes and toys out of clay, using their imagination to make some beautiful things.
Years passed. The children spent the summers at the dacha, surrounded by the love and care of the adults and helping with work in the garden as best they could.
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In 1995–1996, when the large house was built, we installed a proper Russian stove. The workers dismantled the older smallhouse, but they left a lot of pieces that needed to be cleared up. We talked often about how we needed to make a start on this work.
One day, Kolya and Andrei’s friends, Anton and another Andrei, came to visit. I remember it was a warm, sunny day. Everyone was relaxing—lying in hammocks or swinging gently back and forward on swings. Natasha got up and went off somewhere. After a while, she came back wearing boots
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and gloves, carrying something like a crowbar and started dismantling what was left of the small house.
Kolya’s friend Andrei saw what Natasha was doing and said to Kolya and his brother, “Look at you sitting there, relaxing, while your little sister is working!” Everyone got up, put on gloves and set to work, keen to help Natasha. When the children went back to Moscow in the autumn, I spent a lot of time on the garden plot by the dacha making bonfires to get rid of the last bits and pieces before New Year.
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There was a big plum tree growing in the middle of the plot and a table where the children sat and ate fruit and watermelons, which their parents brought to the dacha on weekends. Irina levelled the ground next to the table, covered it with sand and,after the sun had warmed the sand, the children took off their shoes and enjoyed themselves, doing exercises, jumping about barefoot and dancing on the warm sand. We always thought it was very important to do things that helped the children to grow healthy and strong—at the dacha and also when we were relaxing by the sea or by the river.
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The dacha was in the beautiful taiga of Vereya District, south of Moscow. The children flourished, breathing in the fresh country air and seeing the beauty of nature all around them.
In the winter, of course, the children moved back to Moscow, and Irina took Natasha, Kolya and Andrei to painting classes at the Children’s Creative Centre. They did well and brought their work and drawings home.
I stayed at home with Ksenia who was still little. The two of us saw them off every day, looking down from the fourth-floor window
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as Irina led the children by the hand in all weathers, rain or snow. They went to their classes in the evening after school. Their father, Sergei, picked the children up later, after his work. He took the two boys home, and Ksenia and Natasha went home with their mum and dad.
These classes were certainly very important for the children’s development and for Natasha they were perhaps what determined her choice of a future career.
Irina prepared the children in advance whenever we had a family celebration:
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they made a board with cuttings and wrote about real events and their successes. If we were celebrating a birthday, the children drew pictures with birthday wishes and held mini-exhibitions. The apartment was always decorated with handmade crafts in preparation for New Year.
In 2000, Natasha and Kolya began their education. They worked hard at school. At home they were very diligent doing their homework and preparing for school lessons.
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In a family, when the children go to school and begin to grow up, the adults start to wonder what professions their children will choose.
And they are bound to remember the talents and professions of previous generations of their family.
My father, Boris Konstantinovich, was an officer and a colonel in the border troops. His brother, Uncle Yura, was a teacher, and my grandfather Kostya (my father’s father) was a proofreader for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper.
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My grandmother Olya was an opera singer; she had a mezzo-soprano voice and sang at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. She was also a talented artist: we have a carpet hanging in our dacha, on which Grandmother Olya painted an oil copy of Shishkin’s work, Morning in a Pine Forest. We have other paintings by her as well, including a particularly fine still life.
On the side of my mother, Susanna Borisovna, my grandfather Boris Grigorievich Sergiev was a lawyer and an honorary citizen of the city of Vyatka
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in Kirov region. He came from a large family: one of his brothers was a professor of geology; his sister was a successful ophthalmologist; and his sister’s son, my cousin Artyom, was a diplomat who worked as First Secretary at the Embassy in China and then at the Foreign Ministry. Another brother of my grandfather, Pyotr Grigorievich Sergiev, was a doctor, academician, and director of the Institute of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was among the doctors who led work to overcome the scourge of malaria.
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The disease was finally eradicated in the USSR in the 1960s and Pyotr Sergiev is mentioned in the Russian Medical Encyclopaedia for his contribution to this achievement.
Also on my mother’s side, her mother (my grandmother) Varvara Vladimirovna loved to paint. We have a painting at home by her, in which she depicted her husband, Grandpa Boris, standing next to a pond with a large tree in the background as well as some other paintings by her.
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My grandmother came from a large family. Her brothers were in the military, one of her sisters was a pianist, and all of them were talented at knitting, embroidery and painting.
My brother Kostya and my husband, Gennady Petrovich (Natasha’s grandfather), had technical education. My husband’s uncle, Ivan, was an artist. We visited him on one occasion and I remember sitting in an armchair with my little daughter Irina, who was about four years old, on my lap, surrounded by other guests, when Ivan looked at me and said: “I would like to paint a picture to be called Mother and Daughter.”
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They say that talents are sometimes passed down from generation to generation. But to be endowed with a particular gift or talent is not enough in itself: a person is unlikely to succeed in any profession without diligence and hard work.
Natasha worked hard and conscientiously at school, then went on to study at the Painting Faculty of the Academy of Arts in Moscow.
This success was unexpected and wonderful, and we were all very happy for her.
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She put all her energy into her studies at the Academy. The teachers there were impressed by her work and placed it in various exhibitions. In the summer months Natasha continued to work on her art while living at a dacha near Mozhaisk.
The neighbours there couldn’t believe how hard Natasha worked on her pieces. Natasha made a neighbour, Aunty Valya, very happy by giving her a landscape painting that she had admired.
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Natasha has given some of her paintings to me. They reflect the world wonderfully and I like them very much. Most of all, I feel joy and pride for Natasha.
For her diploma, Natasha was asked to paint pictures on the theme of “the night”, which she did very successfully, receiving the best possible degree at the Academy and the professional title of painter-artist in June 2019.
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But I still remember June 1994, when Natasha came to the dacha with her parents. I see her running towards me along the path, prettily dressed, happy and smiling, spreading her little arms, with the sun shining brightly and the birds singing, and with the endless expanses of the Borodino countryside around us, instilling us with natural energy, giving us adults the strength for life and work, and giving the children the strength to grow in harmony with nature and to develop their abilities and talents to the full.
About the edition
Contemporary art has long ceased to be an exclusively visual practice. It has become a space of meanings where language, gesture and body intermix, revealing the diversity of human experience. In this context, the name of Natasha Romanova is central to the debate about deafness, communication and their forms of artistic expression. The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” If language truly defines the boundaries of our knowledge, then the Deaf and those who hear must inhabit different worlds. But how do these different worlds intersect?
Natasha Romanova is deaf and comes from a family of hearing parents. Perhaps because of this, she is particularly sensitive to the cultural differences between the two groups, which she explores in her art. The fingerspelling alphabet (daktil’nyj alfavit) of Russian Sign Language is a central theme of Natasha’s art, to which she refers in many of her works. Fingerspelling is a form of speech, along with spoken, sign and written speech. To each letter of the Russian alphabet there corresponds a finger sign, so that the letters can be “written” in the air one after the other.
Fingerspelling follows the rules of the Russian language: for example, the word moloko (milk) is conveyed exactly as it is written. When fingerspelling wholephrases, the lexemes (usually equivalent to words) are separated by a pause or a small hand movement. In Russian Sign Language, which consists mainly of gestures, fingerspelling is used when there is no sign for a word or when conveying proper names. Quite often, fingerspelling is used to make a sign for a person’s name. For example, the sign for “Natasha Romanova” consists of the first letters of her first and last names (NR) as they are fingerspelt. Fingerspelling is often the starting point for beginners in sign-language because, in order to master it, it is sufficient to learn 33 hand shapes. It is not unusual to compose long statements or, for example, to share detailed impressions of a film by fingerspelling alone. Indeed, fingerspelling can be used as an independent form of language for communication in everyday life and it is used for this purpose by deafblind people.
Every person has their own unique handwriting and fingerspelling is individual in the same way. Some people keep their hand in one place when they are fingerspelling, while others move their hand from left to right, as if writing. Some people show each symbol clearly and slowly, one after the other, while others write in the air so quickly that the transition between letters is almost imperceptible. Natasha illustrates her grandmother’s book of memories about her childhood in her own special way: every one of the fingerspellings is unique, like handwritten letters.
The concept of fingerspelt text prompts the thought that speech in sign language cannot be recorded using traditional means or written down in the usual sense, because the meaning of a gesture is born in movement and not in static graphics. Natasha Romanova expands the linguistic context: in addition to familiar static printed words, handmade words are born. Fingerspellings, which are usually perceived in three-dimensional space and movement, become text: perhaps this is how the grandmother tells her text to Natasha; or perhaps this is Natasha herself retelling the story to readers, or fingerspelling it as she reads it. In this way a new environment for communication emerges in the book.
This zine is not meant to be didactic. The aim is not so much to decipher and immerse oneself in the process of reading fingerspellings from the surface of the paper, but rather to feel the difference in the flow of the two narratives, to see something special in each of the two worlds. In one of them spoken language becomes a visual sign, and in the other the image of the visual sign is transferred from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space. Natasha then modifies this process and transfers the fingerspelling sign-gesture onto paper, playing with the meaning of the text and its perception, lending great importance to her grandmother’s words, making them more touching.
— Vladislav Kolesnikov, hard of hearing
Curator of programmes for the d/Deaf community at
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Arina Fartukh, Grigory Cheredov, Maria Vinogradova, Vyacheslav Nemirov, Tamara Shatula and Vladislav Kolesnikov for giving me the opportunity to publish a book about my childhood and for their interest in me and my work. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my grandmother Lyudmila Borisovna Nazarova (née Kaptyolkin) for describing my childhood and for her kindness and warmth.
I am grateful for the love and support of my parents, Sergei Nikolaevich and Irina Gennadievna Romanov, my sister Ksenia Romanova, and my brothers Nikolai Davydov and Andrei Chuchin.
— Natasha Romanova