Hello Nina and welcome to NotRandomArt. To start with, could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
I studied Art History for 10 years and had the opportunity to explore styles and features of creativity of different artists. Many artists have influenced my artistic practice and some of them have impacted particularly the way of self-expression in Art.
I want to point out among many remarkable artworks the painting of Giorgio de Chirico "The Red Tower.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistical as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistical point in your life when you are now?
Many people inspired me. My sister, my father and teachers encouraged me as well, saying, I am talented in Art. While studying at the art school, teachers also said I can arrange shapes and lines very well. At that time I was winner of the international contest of children's drawings. I have also studied the art history of Europe and Russia. During my studies at the university I was interested in many artists – Van Gogh, Picasso and Dali just to name a few.
What in your opinion defines a work of art? And moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?
Art is not only about the feelings and self-expression of an artist or about beautiful spots and landscapes on the walls. Art can have a lot of content, which can cover a wide field of ideas and thoughts. Sometimes art can be inexplicable and subconsciously affect the audience.
Contemporary art in comparison with art of the past until the 20 th century is more independent from the customers. We know that many great works of art of the past were created as commission work by order of kings and churches and had to have the customer's content. Also, most part of the content of art in the Middle Ages and later was religious. Contemporary artists more express their ideas, views, and also try to have own style, different to others. The artist is not performer of other people and not a craftsman. The artist is an individual and has own point view on the world and creativity.
Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
“ Nothing lasts forever “... Shakespeare. "One can not enter the river twice", - Heraclitus said.
The outside world is unstable and often frightening with wars and destruction. Zen Buddhism helps me in this chaos to have peace of mind.. I always wanted to get an education in many areas and have knowledge of philosophy, psychology, literature.
My cultural substratum forms my aesthetics and influences on content of my paintings.
I prefer to do paintings with no clear meaning. The viewer must have own version of meaning and have a chance to imagine the content
I have different methods. Sometimes I make sketches unconsciously and then using them do the paintings, but add or change something. Sometimes, I know exactly what will be shown and what style and color scheme of my painting before starting to do. But I do know that I cannot live a long time without creating my paintings. For me, it's output to another reality, where I enjoy the harmony and perfection.
Oftenly, artists struggle to merge in their practice the modern relationship between mass media and “classical” forms of art, what is visible especially in painting. Could you place yourself in this tension?
For me mass media, current events have little effect on the creation of my paintings. I choose a theme for the paintings eternal values and issues of life and death, good and evil. Philosophy has an impact on the content of my creative work
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
Each artist expresses in his art own inner world. This includes certain human emotions and different aspects of human experience. An artist is mirror of the external world, which is meaningful and impacts on his feelings. The consciousness and subconscious of the artist influence on the content of his artworks
Since we revolve around the issue of communication this time, we have one more question: in your opinion, can art change the future for inter-human communication?
How can art help us make sense of these complex histories?
olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.