I was born in a society with a patriarchal mentality, where everything that really moved the world was in men’s competence. When I were 3 years old, this paradigm seemed so logical it made me sure that gender distribution occurs at the stage of growing up – the most worthy girls have a chance to turn into men, since they are the crown of evolution, and the least significant ones will keep growing as women. However, here I decided to go beyond the confines of juxtaposing the masculine and the feminine. By consciously shifting the emphasis from corporality and gender differences, I erase all the behavioral clichés imposed by age-old conventions.

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Speaking about the universal, I talk about loneliness, infantilism, aloofness and dependence on society, creating the desire to close down and simultaneously declare oneself, prompting one to broadcast the alter ego. Through the embodiment of my own hypostases in all of my characters, I find a point of access in my personal experience to universal problematic that pierces through everyone’s soul.

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The lack of any external identification gives the viewer a chance to try on their own face on the character’s one and, becoming a full-fledged participant of the plot, walk the path to themselves alongside me. My faceless characters serve as conduits, through which we descend into the recesses of our beings and encounter our authentic selves. This juncture of self-revelation may prove exceedingly painful, yet unfailingly yields salutary insights.

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The basis of several works was staged photography. For this, I draped figures with fabrics used in haute couture, symbolizing an impeccable facade. Then, I meticulously processed the print on canvas, washing away the emulsion, applying new layers, introducing spatial continuity and complex painterly extensions into the composition. The multidimensional painting disrupted the photographic immediacy, depriving it of an active plane and rendering its states timeless.