Spring 2022 Showcase Koshenina

Greta Koshenina

Grapefruit boys (short film)

Grapefruit Boys is a short film focusing on small business owners Macon and Graham. Last May, the two started grapefruit (grpfrt for short), selling hand dyed overalls. Based in Water Valley, Mississippi, Graham and Macon now sell brightly colored hand dyed overalls, pants, bucket hats, and other apparel. The boys are jokesters, but are serious at times, and this is reflected through their business plan and merchandise. Their signature overalls can be spotted throughout Oxford, and their business is growing, reaching others through Instagram and word of mouth. Grapefruit’s signature overalls come in shades of earth tones as well as bright pastels and are made for hard work but also fashion. This film focuses not only on how grapefruit came to be, but also the boys’ dynamic personalities and friendship.

Macon and Graham’s story fits into a larger puzzle—many artists are moving from Oxford to Water Valley in search of affordable housing and peace from the larger city. Growing up in Water Valley, I was surrounded by murals and other artwork adorning the near-abandoned historic mainstreet, which is now itself a vibrant place of commerce and small businesses. Grapefruit Boys tells a story of two people finding joy through their work while bringing others joy through what they sell and create.

Baggage (photography)

Baggage is a documentary series of photographs that speaks to the universal difficulties and tenderness surrounding family relationships, death, and the baggage everyone carries. Baggage is an ode to memory and survival through storytelling and material objects collected over the years by my momma, Anna, and her sister, Linda. Momma and Linda’s mother, Opal, passed away when momma was 19 years old. The series is an excavation of the women’s lives, shedding light on the elements overlooked, forgotten, and unspoken. When their father Dan passed away, the family home went up for sale and the four siblings, Mark, Linda, Tina, and momma,  were left to clean out the home. Many of the objects featured are housed in personal trunks which are stored in my parent’s garage, cluttering the space as well as momma’s psyche.

Baggage is a story of mothers, daughters, and sisters throughout the past and present. Memories are fleeting, especially when they’re not verbalized, and I have attempted to give momma and Linda a space to tenderly reflect. Through these stories, Opal gains form and is brought back through memory. My grandmother was a seamstress, a quilter, a woman, an artist—I may have never known her, but through the sharing of these stories, I am closer to her than ever before.

Greta Koshenina was raised in Water Valley, Mississippi. In May of 2020, she graduated from the University of Mississippi’s Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College with a B.A. in classics and minors in mathematics and Italian. Greta began working at the University of Mississippi Museum the summer of 2018 as a Collections Undergraduate Assistant. There, she worked mainly with Mediterranean antiquities, but she found that her passion was folk art, specifically women folk artists. This led her to the Southern Studies Masters program. Through interviews, she will collect oral histories of folk artists and their family members; these stories will be documented through video and audio recordings, creating biographies of artists featured in the museum’s collections. Additionally, Greta plans to document her hometown of Water Valley.