My practice stems from a process of reflection — a kind of dissection of the mechanisms through which we perceive reality, and the fears that live both within me and the society around me. I track contemporary social moods through indirect signs, weaving my narratives from the fabric of the everyday, from what lingers in the air.

 

At times, the popularity of certain objects or aesthetic trends reveals deeper socio-cultural undercurrents. The massive success of the “pop-it” anti-stress toy — the top-selling item on AliExpress in 2020–21 — speaks to the collective psychological instability brought on by pandemic isolation. Likewise, what might seem like an innocuous surge in the use of patriotic military symbols in domestic contexts is, in fact, a marker of resurgent imperial sentiment: a way to stoke feelings of belonging to a “great nation” and to revive the search for a common enemy.I observe this rightward shift not only in Russia, but across the world — the rise of the “will of the crowd,” and the growing fragility of democratic institutions.

​

I work in the traditional medium of painting, placing my protagonists in deceptively realistic settings that serve as stages for ironic provocation and metaphor. There is often no explicit action — instead, the silence speaks volumes. My work explores the evasion of existential self-confrontation, the transformation of the individual, the quiet erosion of freedom under the weight of societal norms, and the persistent, fragile search for hope.

​

Hope is central to my piece Another Brick in the Wall, from the series Anamnesis. One day, walking past the Kremlin Wall, I noticed workers repainting the bricks red — then carefully redrawing the lines to mimic brickwork once again. I thought: this is a living metaphor. A symbol of how many feel tethered to a grand ideal that is, in truth, an empty profanation — a bubble swollen with propaganda.

The composition subtly echoes Rudolf Zallinger’s The Road to Homo Sapiens. The path to freedom and human dignity is long and perilous — like protest itself, it demands effort, resilience, and risk. And yet, it is a path each individual must walk alone. No one can take it on our behalf.