My family's stories of life in the U.S.S.R. have always been filtered through a repressive, omnipresent Stalinist lens. 53 Hits is the documentation of a staged action, through which I strive to (literally) break away from the pre-packaged narratives I inherited from my parents. The porcelain bust of Stalin functions as a stand-in for the Soviet past they worked hard to bury, and I desired to understand. The title refers to the year of Stalin's death, foreshadowing the profound changes the Soviet Union would undergo in the decade leading up to my parents' birth, but also to the number of times it took to fully destroy the bust itself.