Inheritance

This spring, artist Katya Stepanov, a Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union, opens an immersive installation that invites audiences to embark on an investigative journey into identity. A surreal museum of memories and characters greet visitors as they move from room to room, exploring her inheritance and learning to examine their own.

Are we who we claim, or are our identities defined by our inheritance-our cultural upbringing and social conditions outside of our control? Guests' perspectives evolve as they become characters in Katya's life and witness her experience as a Russian-Jewish immigrant, stranger in a foreign land, teenage rebel and, eventually, "American" artist in Brooklyn.

Audiences explore inheritance in an interactive, hidden soundscape revealed in fragments of personal and cultural history-tales, relics, songs and poems embedded in the space. Using state of the art "sound glasses", guests are able to explore Katya's inheritance and other stories on their own.

As new dimensions of her and the character's stories emerge, guests must reach their own conclusions: 

What does it mean to inherit an identity? Can we be the authors of our own story?