What does serving art mean to you?
It's a mission. When a person has meaning in life, has a mission, they feel needed, fulfilled, loved, in demand — there's a whole universe packed into the words "service" and "mission." For me, this is service to truth. It's my personal nature — I love truth. Since there's beauty in me, I see beauty — like calls to like, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So I serve truth. I feel it, I see it, and I'm not serving some abstract, otherworldly art — I feel that I'm essentially serving truth, because I myself am art.
I think of Marina Abramović — she had one of her early video installations where she brushed her hair non-stop, saying, "Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful." Marina Abramović has so many brilliant installations, she's truly a queen, a towering figure of contemporary art. Maybe I don't agree with all her ideas, but we live in a materialistic world, and he who pays the piper calls the tune. Like Ai Weiwei, Marina Abramović serves a particular message — and that comes with big money, big platforms. And thank God for that, she's undoubtedly a genius, hugely talented.
As for me, I essentially serve truth, because I am art myself, and I experience this within me, upon me, and I see it clearly in others.
Why does creation matter more than promotion?
I simply believe you can't fit everything into one life. There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 365 days in a year. And I want to manage to express everything — or at least as much as I possibly can. I spend my time this way — it's like playing with all ten fingers instead of just one. Like anyone, I play many roles. But creation is so deeply personal, so intimate… Is your intimate life important to you? It's the same here. These are my personal experiences. And because it's personal — it matters enormously to me.
How do you find balance between creating and promoting?
We live in a materialistic world, and you have to understand where you stand. A couple of days ago, an old friend of mine — he's quite elderly — told me: "Sveta, here's what I've figured out in my life: life is like riding a bicycle. As long as you pedal, you move forward. Stop pedaling, and you fall."
As for balance — my recipes won't help you, because women and men have different recipes, different meanings, different lives. For me it's a theory and practice of wants: if I want to, I do it; if I don't, I don't. That's the whole balance. But, as you rightly noted, I personally prioritize creating works, so it takes up an incomparably larger part of my personal life.
That said, I urge everyone to stay aware of where they stand. Maslow's pyramid: the physical world, survival, nourishment — these are basic things, and they take priority over many others, which should be built on the foundation that you can feed yourself, or that someone feeds you by some miracle. You need to be clear-eyed about where you are, who you're with. That's the practical solution — not to stubbornly cling to something just because you feel like it in the moment. There's objective reality, and you always need to keep it in view, including when setting priorities.
Have there been moments when promotion got in the way of creativity?
There have been. And that's probably why promotion hasn't taken up much space in my life — maybe none at all — because it distracts me enormously. I like to focus on myself and on my creative work, so I can convey as truthfully as possible the images I see within me, upon me, beneath me — in my creative world, in my own channel.
How do you explain your position to gallerists?
Honestly, not well. Like many artists, I find it hard. Unfortunately, there are plenty of missteps and shortcomings for all sorts of reasons. As long as we're moving in the same direction, we communicate. The moment friction appears, a certain reality kicks in: there are millions of artists and galleries are far, far fewer — by hundreds, maybe thousands, even tens of thousands of times fewer. With that kind of imbalance, there are nuances, coincidences, and tricks involved. Maybe this just isn't my strong suit, which is why it's even hard for me to answer this question in detail.
What do you lose by not actively promoting yourself?
I lose audience, I lose popularity, I lose viewers, I lose the energy that viewers could be pouring into me and into my life, and ultimately into my creative work. Not promoting yourself is a real drawback, because it creates an imbalance. If you pour so much into your creative work, returns should come back to you. And if you don't promote yourself, how will those returns ever find you?
How has the internet changed the need for promotion?
Modern life is shifting toward modern technology. If you want to ride the bicycle without falling, you have to keep up with the times, keep pedaling. In this case, that means pedaling the internet. There's no way around it — that's today's reality.
Either you do it yourself, or — as often happens in creative partnerships — your partner does it. No need to look far: Dostoevsky married his secretary. The people who promote you one way or another are the ones pushing your art forward. Whether you push yourself on the internet, or someone else pushes you — a gallerist, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, doesn't matter. But it has to be done.
What's the minimum amount of promotion an artist needs?
It's practically a given by now. There used to be a need for a website. Now, having gotten more familiar with the internet, I understand a website is still necessary, even though at some point, chasing social media trends, I abandoned it completely. But after going through that experience, I realized: you need a website. You need Instagram — platforms that give you visuals.
If we're talking about the minimum promotion an artist needs, it comes down to specific platforms — there aren't that many. About five main ones, maybe two or three more if you stretch it — and that's where special new products come in, like NFTs: OpenSea, setting up a crypto wallet. There are other, more exclusive platforms too, where you find high-end buyers, unlike OpenSea, where the buyers are more mass-market. It's the same story with photography — separate platforms for photographic art, separate ones for digital-NFT art, which can exist on its own, like sculpture exists apart from two-dimensional art, or it can be purely digital from the start, with no connection to drawing, classical art, art schools, and so on.
But the essentials are: a website, Instagram. Instagram is extremely important. There are plenty of others too: in many countries YouTube is huge. I'd say Instagram, YouTube, and a website are like the three apostles. Just as God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — here it's website, Instagram, and YouTube.
But, for example, in Russia, Telegram is big — many artists run their own channels there. In Europe, it's Pinterest. And then there are specific products like digital art: I convert many of my sculptures and graphic works into NFTs. There are platforms for photography aimed at mass buyers at accessible prices, and others for a more exclusive audience willing to pay serious money. Every profession has its own internal specialization. But the baseline is: website, YouTube, Instagram — these are the core platforms.
In Russia right now, under sanctions, there's no YouTube or Instagram, but there is a website. I, for instance, also created a Telegram channel, where I post short videos — reviews of new works or interesting conversations with colleagues.
Different countries have their own approaches to the online distribution of visual art.
Will your attitude toward promotion change in the future?
Of course it will. Evolution is inevitable, and I genuinely want it to happen. Because how else would I reach my audience, communicate with them through an exchange of energy? The more people who see my art… If I believe in my art, if it resonates with the viewer, if the K-Liée brand resonates with the audience — that's an exchange, both energetic and financial. I live by this idea and bring it to life — moving toward improvement, raising quality, expanding my promotion in the future. That's the path to evolution.