Tell us about your earliest memories of art in Russia
My family had a lot of books — big albums from the major museums and private collections, books about artists. My family had no connection to art whatsoever, but somehow it turned out that every year my mother received two or three big catalogues as a birthday gift. Over the years of my childhood, maybe twenty-five to thirty of them piled up. They stood in the cabinet with their spines facing into the room, and I was constantly flipping through them. They were only reproductions, but they were always right in front of my eyes — that's probably my most vivid childhood memory.
The second memory is how I ended up at a neighborhood art studio in Otradnoye, on the outskirts of Moscow. I was ten, and there was cigarette smoke, easels, artists, freedom, art, self-expression. It made a very strong impression on me.
What difficulties did a young artist face in Russia in the '90s?
My path in art started around 1987, so by the nineties I was already studying and finished the institute. The difficulties weren't really about the times — they were more about my own love of freedom.
I studied at the Petrovsko-Razumovskaya Art School — my neighbor in the building, who herself never dreamed of being an artist but whose parents sent her to classes, brought me there. I showed my work from the neighborhood studio, and I was accepted; I studied there alongside regular school until eleventh grade.
I did a diploma project whose subject felt forced to me, but I saw it through to the end anyway. At the final review, the gray-haired instructors started explaining that a lot needed to be redone. I was about seventeen, and that's when I rebelled for the first time: I said I wasn't going to redo anything. They told me that in that case I wouldn't get the school diploma. I agreed — before that I'd never had a grade lower than top marks, but I'd already done the project against my own will and was ready to leave it at that. I didn't get the diploma. I never had any contact with that school again, though I'm still friends with some of its graduates to this day.
A similar conflict happened at my first institute as well — in the ceramics and sculpture department of the technological institute on Semyonovskaya. In sculpture I earned my rightful top grade from Givarkyan — an Honored Master: everyone else spent two months sculpting, while I sculpted a skull in two hours. But in ceramics, the instructor told the review committee, word for word, that in order to bring my hormones down a notch, they should give me a four instead of a five, and she asked the committee to agree. Meanwhile, all my work was taken into the institute's collection — that was the Soviet-era rule: the best student work stayed in the collection. I saw no logic in lowering my grade while taking the very pieces I'd poured so many sleepless nights into as 'the best.' It was because of that instructor that I eventually left the institute.
What was the turning point in your decision to leave Russia?
There wasn't really anything special — in essence, I never actually left Russia in the sense people usually mean by that phrase. I've told this story before, about Osho, the Indian philosopher who moved from India to America: he said that a man and a woman are like heaven and earth. A man is interested in business, the dollar exchange rate, the president, while a woman is interested only in love. At that moment I was going through difficulties in my personal life, and when an invitation came from a London university, I decided to go.
In England there are three major institutions: Goldsmiths, the UFARTS Academy, and the University of the Arts London, which includes six colleges — Central Saint Martins, Chelsea, Camberwell, and others. I ended up in an international group of twelve people from all over the world: someone from America, someone from Brazil, someone from Italy — and me, from Russia.
I went for no more than a year. But I'd had this quality since childhood — I love children very much and always wanted a lot of them. And since I myself had constantly been held back — both at regular school and at art school — I wanted to give my children a place where they could be themselves. At the time I had no experience with Western education, and later I became quite disillusioned with it, but in that moment I wanted to try it — and to try it through my children. I hesitated for a long time, but in the end I took my children with me to England for that year. And then, as we know, that one year stretched into many years. So for me, as a woman, the personal was the starting point — there's no political subtext here, I wasn't unhappy living in Russia.
How did England receive you in 2006?
Honestly, England welcomed me very warmly. There was no culture shock — there was adaptation. In the first year I lost half my hair simply because I didn't know English. Banking, studies that were nearly impossible to understand — it was very hard. But I have one character trait that helps enormously in work: I'm like a bull terrier — once I bite down, I don't let go.
In England the academic year is divided into terms. For the first third of the year I got 47 out of 100 — for someone who had always been a top student, that was unfamiliar territory. But it really was about the language: I simply didn't understand anything, and could barely write. At the same time, I was learning the language — I arrived in 2006, and by 2007 I'd already mastered it fully. I was ashamed that I couldn't understand or speak — ashamed to tears. So from six in the morning I was gnawing at that language with my teeth.
By the end of the year I graduated, and my diploma project was written up by Time Out London. So in effect I got not 100 out of 100, but a hundred and ten. By the end of the year I had fully restored my sense of where I stood in art. After that everything went very well: the English fell in love with my works on paper — they're generally very fond of drawing — and my sculpture, and there were exhibitions all the time. Seva Novgorodtsev interviewed me as a successful Russian artist abroad — and Seva Novgorodtsev, as we know, is a legend, an entire era. At the University of the Arts London, 36 top students are chosen each year from all six colleges combined — I made that list, and that's exactly why Time Out London wrote about my work as one of the best of the year. So my life in art in England started off well, and the only real trial was that language shock.
What doors opened and closed after the move?
By and large, nothing really opened or closed — it was more of an evolution. As an artist living by my inner life, I simply don't make use of most opportunities: a door opens, and I walk right past it. That, actually, is my big problem — instead of seizing opportunities and building a career, my womanhood and motherhood always come first. I think of art as my own legs, my own head, my own hands — it's already with me, I don't need to run anywhere or rush. So I don't feel like any moment is slipping away, but for a career and for making your way in the world, that's definitely a big drawback.
How did your art change after moving to London?
It changed enormously. I felt right on my own skin just how hung up we Russians are — including in art — and how merciless we are, to ourselves and to each other. We criticize ourselves absolutely ruthlessly. In England I allowed myself to be who I had always been, even though in Russia I'd been marked down for it — not by everyone, of course, there are also decent professionals who don't care what kind of personality you have, only that you get the job done. As my late husband used to say, in the end, someone always has to show up and do the work. You need a result — I show up and deliver it. Yes, I have my own personality, but so does everyone, and that intolerance for other people's individuality disappeared in England.
I had a blast over there — I walked around with feathers in my hair, in miniskirts, with revealing necklines, and no one took it as an invitation to anything. It was simply — I'm an artist, this is how I see things. At the time that suited me perfectly, and I enjoyed it.
Do you keep a connection with the Russian art community?
Honestly, that connection never really existed, so there's not much to maintain. I keep in touch with a few people who hold positions in the Russian art world; they respect me as an artist and are always puzzled as to why I'm not making a name for myself on the Russian art market. But building that kind of presence is closely tied to networking, and networking takes time and living in one place. People often ask me how to break into the Western market — but for that you need to actually live in the West, because you network wherever you live.
So when I'm in Russia, I feel enormous inspiration — mostly I sit in my studio and produce a lot of new work here. I like it — as they say, there's no place like home, and that holds true in terms of output: it's not just about cost, since production is even cheaper in China or India, it's about inspiration. So I maintain a connection more with Russia's energy than with the art community as such — the few people I was friends with, I'm still friends with, it just happens that they belong to that community.
What qualities helped you become an international artist?
Openness, probably. I love proverbs — I think they hold the quintessence of a language's and a people's wisdom. Here's a fitting one: judge not, lest ye be judged. I never had a fixed opinion about the West, because it simply didn't exist yet. And once I moved there, I saw that we and the West are like heaven and earth — our ways of life are, to put it mildly, direct opposites.
But one way of life is just as grounded as the other — it's very hard to judge here. It's like a deep-sea whale trying to judge a nightingale hanging in a cage in someone's kitchen — and the other way around. We live in different worlds, our countries carry completely different energies. I felt it right away: after moving to London my art changed dramatically, and in some ways irrevocably. It became lighter, less technical, I allowed myself more freedom.
And that openness, that lack of hang-ups, that ability to communicate without prejudice — that's what helped me. I never had some preconceived attitude toward those people to begin with. There are good people in any given moment, and not-so-good ones — same as everywhere. But the way of life, the stereotypical grid people are slotted into — that really is different.
What would you change about your path, if you could?
I probably would have wanted to walk through those doors of opportunity that I kept passing by, thinking: tomorrow, once I finish all my chores, mop the floors, and so on — figuratively speaking. I missed a great many career opportunities. But if you ask me now, I'm not sure I would have done things differently: life is a constant series of choices, and there are only 24 hours in a day. Either you take the kids to three different classes, or you sit in the studio for six hours and draw something. And to sit in the studio and draw, inspiration has to come, and for that you need to live an entirely different kind of life — to be in a particular state where inspiration visits more often.
And that state has nothing to do with maternal energy — it's about something else entirely. Ninety percent of my friends who are international artists have no children: none of them, aside from the occasional niece or cousin somewhere. People chasing after that particular state spend their lives in the studio, in art residencies. But I already wanted children at the age of five, six, seven — I'm simply built that way, I saw myself exactly like that, and I truly did become a successful and good mother.
But not everyone is built that way — everyone has their own script and their own wants. And it's precisely that story that held back my career path. I have plenty of ambition — I'm generally a drama queen, a grand one at that. But to miss out on being a woman, a mother, a wife — I'm not willing to do that: those states simply don't mix with pouring colossal amounts of time, attention, and love into a career. I might want to change that, but nothing comes for free, and apparently I'm not willing to pay the price — for me, it's too steep. I've already sacrificed it so many times. You know how they say: the eye can see it, but the tooth can't bite it. I understand what needs to be done and where I need to be, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and you have to pay for everything. I'm not sure that even now I'd be willing to pay that price.