Katerina belkina 

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I always found it fascinating to explore psychology of people’s relationships with each other and with the outside world, to give shape to human emotions. To take joy, despondency, indifference, rapture and jealousy and analyze them, break them into pieces. Feelings are abstract, and therefore, it is so interesting to look for and find the form for their visualization. 

My face and body are the main instruments I use to conjure up images I want. Standing in front of the camera as a model, I follow the age-old theatrical practice of role playing. It stimulates, incites the development of my own manner of narration. A part of my work, shooting is akin to a theatrical performance, where an urge to tell the viewer about emotions and feelings manifests itself through the characters in dialogues with the audience. 

A passion for classical art and interest in everything new – technology, discoveries, experiments – led me to the type of mixed media, with which I work. From painting, I take colors and create air as an element of space. I take reality and character from photography. My style finds its roots in a long artistic tradition – collage. That is how my characters and spaces come together. At the next stage, I choose a brush of a graphics program. This is a subtle and accurate tool to create a light, weightless atmosphere similar to that of a dream. In my creative work, I am not searching for the subjects of thought. They spring from everyday life and observations of the people around. Choosing a motif for my exploration, I offer the audience a female view on things that concern me. Undoubtedly, this view is based on feminist principles. Yet, the matter is not in confrontation, but in balance and harmony, where a woman is not an object, but foremost – energy.