“I hoard therefore I am”, Yelena proclaimed in 2014. In the project that she created based on her research into Obsessive Compulsive Hoarding, Yelena imagined herself as a packrat “burrowing into the fabric of experience to extrapolate treasures through consumption and digestion of my habitat”. She used this imagery because this animal reminds of Yelena’s own practice of hoarding and creating her environment. Packrats are nest builders, they use materials from their environment to build nests that may preserve the materials incorporated into them for up to 50,000 years. Thus, enabling scientists to study the environment that persisted at the time the nest was built. Similarly, to packrats, Yelena collects objects that are signature for the time she lives in. She uses these objects as material for storytelling. The visual stories that Yelena creates follow a centring aesthetics of strategically placing garbage to raise its value, such as done in museums.