Crossing the Red Army Street

SHORT BIO   Early on Katerina Belkina (*1974) knew about her exceptional talent to see the world through different eyes. Born in Samara in the southeast of European Russia, she was brought up in an creative atmosphere by her mother, a visual artist. Her education at the Art Academy and the School for Photography of Michael Musorin in Samara gave her the tools to visualize her ideas. Exhibitions of her sublime, mystic self-portraits ensued in Moscow and Paris. Katerina Belkina was nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize (comparable to the British Turner Prize) in Moscow in 2007. She won the International Lucas Cranach Award 2015 and the prestigious Hasselblad Masters Prize in 2016. Currently she lives and works in Werder (Havel).     ARTIST STATEMENT   It has always been fascinating for her to explore the 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 to pieces. Feelings are abstract, therefore it is so interesting to look for and find the form of their visualization.   Her face and body are the main instruments she uses to incarnate the images she wants. Standing in front of the camera as a model, she follows the age-old theatrical practice of playing roles. It gives impetus to the development of her own manner of narration. A part of her 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 her to the type of mixed media, with which she works. From painting, she takes colors and create air as an element of space. Reality and character she takes from photography. Her style originates from a long artistic tradition – collage. That is how her characters and spaces come together. At the next stage, she chooses 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 her creative work, she is not searching for the subjects of thought. They spring from everyday life and observations of the people around. Choosing a motif for her exploration, she offers the audience a female view on things, which concern her. 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.