Exhibition "The Space of Appearance: A Shared Tongue"
Third Floor, CGIS South Building
1730 Cambridge St.
Cambridge
Tue., June 30, 2026 
The exhibition “The Space of Appearances: A Shared Tongue” is an excerpt from Yulia Spiridonova’s ongoing project “Wayward Son,” which examines contemporary displacement of people from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, and Central Asia. The individuals photographed in this body of work have in common the Russian language and the experience of leaving their respective home countries due to political repression, the gradual collapse of personal freedoms, the erosion of civic life and society, or war.
Photographs in the exhibition portray a Russian-speaking immigrant community in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, capturing moments of togetherness in informal, undefined spaces of comfort—where people talk, read, listen to music, daydream, or scroll on their phones. These encounters become what Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, calls “the space of appearances,” a threshold between the private and the public realms. These newly formed communities construct precisely such spaces: provisional and evanescent, yet undeniably vital.
Gazette Classification: Art/Design, Exhibitions, Social Sciences
Organization/Sponsor: The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Speaker(s): Yulia Spiridonova, Artist; Adjunct Faculty, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, Laura A. Sargent, Events Manager, Davis Center
Cost: Free
Contact Info: [email protected]
Harvard Key Required: No
More info: daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu…