About
My artistic practice is a constant dialogue with the many aspects of existence and aims to find a reconciliation between history, individuals and nature. My aim is to find a common language between these three elements through the feminine medium of embroidery, which characterizes my practice in the strongest way.
For me, embroidery is a serious practice: even though its connotation to the female world has always played against it, it’s a specific medium that allows me to combine different materials together and -at the same time- to include an emotional component into the objects or sculptures. One of the materials which I use constantly is a thread, which helps not only connect different stories, but also the time: past and present, traditions and modernity.
My research is driven by my will to create an ecosystem, which I call ‘memory stratum’ where humans, nature and history are but one symbiotic thing. I have started to incorporate memory studies in my research and practice, both as a subject and as a tool, which allows me to appeal to the influence of the past over personality. My focus on research memory and environment is driven by my background. I was born and raised in Sevastopol (Crimea) where the war legacy, layers of history of colonization closely connect with the landscape. Also my first batch of studies in the university, which were focused on social ecology. I am interested in the ‘ghost’ side of history, figures of silence and myths which still impact society. The past becomes a personal narrative, the emotional side of history which is often overlooked and unjustly dismissed. This ‘memory stratum’ is a psychological space built by my installations and texts which encourage storytelling.
The individual and collective history I analyze in my work have a double nature: their distressing character surfaces in my production as love for the macabre and its medieval aesthetics; and my upbringing in the digital era combines them with the narrative of simplified illustration, adding a taste from popculture. The resulting art pieces want to highlight the fragility and mortality of human beings: gore objects that show how death is part of the human psyche and has a role of speculative force in the life of individuals.
The objects I create through embroidery are made of both organic and artificial materials: polyethylene is my modern canvas, which gets filled with soft cotton and is sealed with woollen thread and polished beads. They are a metaphor of human nature: even though we might be surrounded by a hard, manufactured layer, we always have something soft on the inside. And always a story to tell.