SIYU AWARD
SIYU AWARD

Anna-Tia Buss
Pomegranates grow in winter

Faded childhood memories connect me to Kyrgyzstan, the country where I spent my early years. Two decades later, curiosity led me to seek out the girls I once attended kindergarten with, hoping to understand their lives, aspirations, and realities. Through multiple trips, I reconnected with these women, gaining insights into what it means to be a young woman in Kyrgyz society today. As part of the post-Soviet generation, Kyrgyz women navigate the complexities of shaping their country’s future while contending with deeply rooted gender inequality. Despite a history of strong female figures in community leadership, traditional expectations persist, reflecting global struggles for gender equity. This project explores the diversity of perspectives, ambitions, and challenges faced by Kyrgyz women through conversations, interviews, and collaboration. Between my visits, participants shared photographs from their daily lives, which they later transformed into collages—layering personal snapshots to create a rich tapestry of voices and experiences. Alongside the images, text plays a crucial role in this project. The book, published in 2023, is written in English and Russian, with handwritten elements in Kyrgyz. Three in-depth interviews offer further insight into the lives of the women I met, while captions derived from these conversations shape the book’s chapters.

Anna-Tia Buss is a German-Swiss photographer and visual artist based in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work explores themes of identity, beauty standards, body representation, and the lived experience of women in contemporary society. While photography has been the core of her practice, she often extends her projects into multimedia formats, integrating video and sound within exhibition contexts. Collaboration plays a central role in her artistic process: in several works, she has invited participants to actively shape the outcome, questioning authorship and creating space for shared narratives.

Anna-Tia Buss
Pomegranates grow in winter

Faded childhood memories connect me to Kyrgyzstan, the country where I spent my early years. Two decades later, curiosity led me to seek out the girls I once attended kindergarten with, hoping to understand their lives, aspirations, and realities. Through multiple trips, I reconnected with these women, gaining insights into what it means to be a young woman in Kyrgyz society today. As part of the post-Soviet generation, Kyrgyz women navigate the complexities of shaping their country’s future while contending with deeply rooted gender inequality. Despite a history of strong female figures in community leadership, traditional expectations persist, reflecting global struggles for gender equity. This project explores the diversity of perspectives, ambitions, and challenges faced by Kyrgyz women through conversations, interviews, and collaboration. Between my visits, participants shared photographs from their daily lives, which they later transformed into collages—layering personal snapshots to create a rich tapestry of voices and experiences. Alongside the images, text plays a crucial role in this project. The book, published in 2023, is written in English and Russian, with handwritten elements in Kyrgyz. Three in-depth interviews offer further insight into the lives of the women I met, while captions derived from these conversations shape the book’s chapters.

Anna-Tia Buss is a German-Swiss photographer and visual artist based in Zürich, Switzerland. Her work explores themes of identity, beauty standards, body representation, and the lived experience of women in contemporary society. While photography has been the core of her practice, she often extends her projects into multimedia formats, integrating video and sound within exhibition contexts. Collaboration plays a central role in her artistic process: in several works, she has invited participants to actively shape the outcome, questioning authorship and creating space for shared narratives.