Brake Dust 2020

Brake Dust 

Plaster Casts measuring 16cm w x 41cm l & 20cm w x 36cm l 

Brake Dust explores the idea of what Air Pollution might look like if it were imagined as a sculptural object. This is the first in a series of works using crystallography to imagine the unimaginable and indecipherable. The individual casts are scaled-up models of the crystal magnetite, which is an iron ore. 
Brake Dust is made up of many nano particles that are released into the air every time someone brakes their car. Traffic pollution particles can contain many thousands of materials, including carbon, hydrocarbons and bacterial toxins. But because of the materials that modern brakes are made of, the dust that wears from them is highly metallic – including many types of metal, such as iron, copper, titanium and magnesium that studies have shown cause stress and harm to human cells. 
I wanted to visualize what these nano particles would look like if I scaled them up. I am inspired by Plato here in an attempt to make visible the invisible. 

Brake Dust 

Thinking about the nature of the ‘self’, there are so many contrasting and harmonic layers to 'identity' that make a simple definition or understanding difficult. Through using voice over and personal archive footage, Léna's film seeks to unpack this layered complexity and reach to the core of what the ‘self’ can be in an honest, vulnerable way - a human perspective in an increasingly mediated and technological world. 

L'autoritratto

As a former ballet dancer, I often like to observe and capture the human body in an abstract and surreal way, almost like creating a living sculpture. By hiding and revealing parts of it, I like to play with opposites that only contradict each other at first sight, such as reality and illusion, natural and artificial. 

"Faceless"

Performative action and an edition of 6 lithographs
Nida, Lithuania, and Berlin, Germany
50 x 36 cm
2015–2016


A friend told me a story of a conversation he overheard once when he was sailing. Two people were standing on the deck of a boat in the middle of the ocean, looking over the bow, out over the water. One of them turned to the captain and asked, “Where’s sea level?” They were not more than a couple meters from the sea surface, and yet there was an assumption of an absolute sea level that transcended their very real, situated experience of sea level.

Mulling over this question, I built a “high-resolution map-making apparatus” out of wood and acrylic glass. I took it down to the beach, placing it directly on the line between the land and sea. As the waves lapped onto the beach, I traced their limits and accumulated a collection of lines, recording the change in the coastline over the course of one hour. This document was later transcribed as lithographs, etching the fleeting coastline into stone.

Finding Sea Level

A work from my series VERTICAL GARDENS. The destructive sides of mankind fascinated me already as a kid. To realize that we are in the middle of a mass extinction is kind of heartbreaking, especially to see that the majority  of the art world is going to play a dominant role (NFT/crypto currency) in the demand of energy and accelerating global warming. 

Vertical Garden 2

Title: Spendthrift: One Kilometre Drawing
Materials: till receipt paper, ballpoint pen, pasting table
Dimensions: 180cm long x 60 cm wide x approx 110cm high. 

‘Spend Thrift: One Kilometre Drawing’ is a kilometre of till receipt paper entirely covered on both sides with ballpoint pen. One year in the making, it is a memorial to pointless labour and reckless over-spending. It is an embodiment of the greasy, sickening panic one feels when faced with financial crisis and the very real emotional cost of consumption. Debt is considered to be a symptom of bipolar disorder. 



Spendthrift: One Kilometre Drawing, 2020

What if in the near future, those who need a hip replacement are no longer satisfied with a functional piece? We have already seen dental prothesis used as an esthetic complement (used even without necessity). Will in the future people in need of a prothesis reach to artist in order to carry within a practical device that functions also as a work of art? Will it be noticable only through an X-ray machine or will some parts be exposed for everyone to see?⁠

If in the absence of need objects like this become fashionable, Will people exchange them for their healthy bones and tissue?⁠ How will all this look like?⁠
⁠
I fuse new production techniques like 3D printing to explore the possibilities that this materials bring into the arts. My sculptures subtly display negative space through organic shapes, reminiscent to cellular structure, bone or tissue.⁠

TANALTILSURIA

Ntutu Mara Mma (Beautiful Hair)


Hair has been at the center stage for defining and identifying culture and heritage. Over the course of history, humans have had (and still have) a fixation on these tough proteins called keratin that sprout out of our bodies, most noticeably, our scalps. The African continent and Her people have not been left out of this adulation as it has been used not only to enhance the beautification of the wearer but also to share a deeper meaning.

In early African civilizations, hairstyles could indicate a person's family background, tribe and social status; a person's identity could be learned by looking at the hair. It was also used to mark significant activities  and events such as war, death or connecting with deities. For instance,  in modern Senegal and The Gambia when men from the Wolof tribe went to war they wore a braided style, While a woman in mourning would either not "do" her hair or adopt a subdued style. What's more, many believed that hair, given its close location to the skies, was the conduit for spiritual interaction with the gods: perhaps why it was regarded as kinky hair and known to defy gravity. 
Ntutu Mara Mma (Beautiful Hair) investigates the change in trends of African hair styles with emphasis on West Africa as it seeks to draw attention to various symbolic references African hairstyles have taken up, from its African Origins to Slavery and Emancipation, the Civil Rights Era and finally how it is viewed and interpreted in Contemporary Modern Culture.


Ntutu Mara Mma (Beautiful Hair)

digital painting. giclée print on hahnemühle fine art paper mounted on dibond
date. 2020 | size. 120 x 120 cm
edition. unique

Fragments create transparency where there is no longer any connection. What can no longer be told as a whole is constructed as a fragment. However, it does not promise an explanation but rather an approximation and functions differently than direct information. The viewer himself is thus challenged to fill this emptiness and the challenge is, to think smaller.

9FIVE

I  work across many mediums; photography, video, performance and installation are all a part of my practice. I often revisit themes and rituals from my ancestral home in my works - manipulated images of my family members, ceremonial flower arrangements and radically embroidered quilts offer hints into my upbringing in Turkey’s south. During the lockdown, I have started making freehand machine embroidery and tried to capture a vision for a post-pandemic future, along with a journey through my creative influences and history. 

 

When l start making each work with this medium, however, l make plans and lay out all the yarn with colour coordination, but in the end, improvisation leads me. The randomness of mistakes make sense when you look at the work from a few feet away. The process becomes quite satisfying after adding hundred of meters of thread and suddenly, an impression appears. 


 

First I prepare a digital collage and turn that into a physical work by using sewing machine embroidery. It takes a long time and involves a lot of improvisation as well as mistakes that lead me to take new directions. 


I particularly enjoyed sewing the section depicting a sack of thread or a pile of textiles. While the thread is the fabric of the piece, it also becomes the object. I also noticed how time is captured when making these images. The needle with the thread; green, red, yellow, blue, shapes a memory. Two weeks elapse and these works remain. 

Street Sellers

C-print mounted on alu-dibond
90 x 73 cm
+
Ink and pencil on paper
6@ 170 x 150 cm

A photograph of a puddle – taken at Cabo de Roca in Portugal – was printed at 1-to-1 scale and then traced and measured with different units of measure, which resulted in radically different totals for the perimeter. This is a cartographic problem known as the “coastline paradox.” The coastline paradox is the counter-intuitive observation that the coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined length. This results from the fractal-like properties of coastlines. More concretely, the length of the coastline depends on the method used to measure it. Since a landmass has features at all scales, from hundreds of kilometers in size to tiny fractions of a millimeter and below, there is no obvious limit to the size of the smallest feature that should not be measured around, and hence no single well-defined perimeter to the landmass.

For instance, if it were possible to wind an infinitely small measuring tape around every single pebble and grain of sand on an island’s – or puddle’s – perimeter, the coastline’s seemingly finite length would actually unfurl into millions upon millions of kilometers. The more precise mapping becomes, the more challenges it presents to quantification.

Fleeting Sea: Measuring the Coastline of a Puddle

I explore the unmanifested in my work.

Creation of images in a psychological level appealing to memories and past experiences, in which once we “discover an image on the clouds”. As when we were kids we fix with that image until it dissipates. In the case of my work this images stay in the painting creating an intimate relation with the spectator and the piece, also the perspective and the distance create new links to this perception. 

The way to approach and observe my work also is engaging actively for example thinking the background as negative space in which it becomes part of a bigger picture. Therefore intimacy and grow created with interaction with the piece.

Apparently in random chaos and spontaneous bursts of geometrical shapes, specs, pieces and parts, I create my compositions with attention to detail and thus offering the feeling of randomness, but knowing that every piece part and particle have a special place and position exactly as I wanted and planned it.

Among other things the idea of prisoners cinema, in which the eye create images on the visual cortex and is perceived as a "light show" of various colors that appear out of the darkness, also known as visual hallucinations.
In science Phosphene is the phenomenon of seeing light without it actually entering the eye.
Digging behind the surface of the process and exploring the construction of images that are created in our life experience, completing the viewing with the information we have in our mind.

Exploring painting in an archeological sense, discovering layers that compose it. Utilizing the pieces in a reversible way, by deconstructing and fragmenting to create a residual image (an afterimage) that conveys dynamically an intention. 
Acrylic is the medium that best fits to expresses my concept. However, I also work with colored pencils, pastels, pens and markers, or what I find available. I have always been a collector of collections. I collect remnants of paint and classify them, knowing that at a certain point in my career they will be involved in my creation. I rely on the process of adding, removing and altering the surface.

Current  work ,acrylic on canvas 

We would love to introduce to you to Maria and Pavel, who will be talking to us today about their incredible collaborative project ‘NOrmativity’; opening up about their experiences as an LGBTQIA+ photographer in Russia.

Original Magazine: We love your ‘NOrmativity’ project, could you tell us about your journey in creating this body of work and how your collaboration with Pavel Dyagilev came to life?

Maria Krugovaya: “First of all it was Pavel’s idea. He wrote to me and asked if I would take pictures of him naked in the sheer dress. I don’t shoot men much but I knew that usually the theme of ‘men in dress’ is revealed through the old-fashioned view on the «male photoshoot» just adding the dress. I wanted to show a more feminine and gentle point of view on men in general and men in dresses. I intentionally used the same lighting, angles, mood and post production as I use in my photoshoots with women. So I wanted to avoid the effect of ‘wow, this is a man in a dress’ and dig deeper. I think Pavel can explain this better as it is his concept and idea”.

Pavel: “I was going through a rather rough process of self-awareness during the pandemic. All I wanted was to get rid of all the things that pressed me. As a gay man born and raised in a small Russian town in Siberia I always was under pressure of heteronormativity, toxic masculinity and so on. I mean I always had to look like, behave, talk and think like ‘a real man’. But something inside me always knew that this was not ok. So, many years later the inner conflict between who I am and who I always pretend to be came to a peak. And the image of me naked in the sheer dress came to mind. I wrote to Maria and asked if she could make my idea real and she said yes. So while shooting I felt free. Free of everything! Of all the do’s and don’t’s. Free of time and space. I just was myself naked and vulnerable yet powerful and defended by the dress. That is why after I got the result of our work I decided to show it to the world and share my story”. 

Maria: “I just wanted to add. I believe that there is no sweeter and more truthful thing than a person that comes to me on the very peak of his self-expression, experiencing something extra important. I felt a great honour that Pavel trusted his vulnerable and personal idea to me. And I could relate to this  idea so the collaboration was as natural as breathing. Also, it is rather hard to answer this question because the whole process from discussion to the last shoot was like a flow”.

O.M: In your interview with Pavel back in 2019, you touch upon Instagram blocking imagery on artist profiles. Instagram censoring/blocking images is frustrating for many however, Instagram in now in the processes of changing their policy on nudity; do you think this will allow more creative freedom and expression online, especially within the LGBTQIA+ and BAME communities? 

M.K: The censorship affects any creator in the way of thinking about posting his/her work online as well as while making the content. I mean when I personally go to post this or that picture I always think whether it will be blocked or not. But in the long term perspective I think about it even while shooting. So, it becomes a background idea of the process. I think about the composition, lighting, pose, as well as whether it is going online or not. The thing is that Instagram toughens their policy on nudity and sexuality (that is what we’ve heard here in Russia), so I do not think that censorship allows more creative freedom and expression online in Instagram especially. However, there are many other resources for artists who work with nudity, porn and other censored content. Maybe these platforms will rise up besides Instagram. But still I do not think that censorship helps with promoting any kind of artistry. 

As for the LGBTQIA+ and BAME community, nudity as a part of body positivity is a part of expression of their artistry. Censorship affects them as well. However, discriminated groups always been banned from an open space so to say and always found new ways of expression and speaking out loud. Maybe it will be a bit easier for them to find more ways of bypassing the censorship or restrictions.

O.M: As an LGBT photographer, have you faced any challenges within the creative industry? How have you overcome these challenges, and have they shaped you as an artist? 

M.K: As a photographer I always worked with private clients. And that is why I never faced the discrimination in artistic sphere. But there was one story. Back in 2008 I worked full-time in a photo studio in a mall. When they got to know that I am a lesbian they forbid me to work with girls under age 21. So, when parents brought their children for a photoshoot (not nude) the administrators of the studio warned them that I was lesbian. I needed to hold the door open while shooting. Many people denied to get pictures from me. In my future work I began to keep distance with my models as I thought that it was wrong to be close to a woman. My friend who is a photographer told me that it was very noticeable on my pictures, so very gently I began to get closer with the models on the shoots and it worked. Now the only boarders that I respect are the personal boarders. And in my artistry it is very important to show the hidden parts of a person through the lenses of my camera. I need to be as close with my model as she or he allows me to.

O.M: Who inspires your artistry? What themes and motifs influence your work and thought process?

M.K: It may sound a bit cliché but a lot of my inspiration comes from life. I guess that there are two ways of inspiration. The first one is an experience that you get throughout your life, the second one is the ways of artistic expression that other artists used. So, for example, you can see in a movie someone spits in other’s mouth, it excites you and you decide to use this motif in your future shooting. Then you are to choose the way you can show it. You can refer to any artist you like or any picture you saw online for example. And when the motif and artistic media connects the satisfaction comes as a result of this inspirational work.

O.M: We have seen that you are sometimes in front of the lens yourself, has this always been a part of your artistry? As a photographer, does this shape the way you are in front of the lens?

M.K: Modelling in front of other photographers’ cameras was not always a part of my photography intentions. I started to get in front of the lens when I decided to improve my own work and the connection with the model and the photographer. Because most of my models are amateur or not models at all. I wanted to know what they come through on the photoshoots and I wanted to understand what they feel in front of the lens. I wanted to comfort them with the right words and intentions. As many photographers, I also thought that it is rather easy to just to stand in front of the camera. But I was so wrong. It is hard as hell. And it really helped me in my work even more than any workshops with famous photographers. So I strongly recommend young photographers to take part in photoshoots as models. Particularly naked as it is even harder. As a photographer sometimes it disturbs me to be a model because I think of the wrong lighting or angle that doesn’t compliment me and so on. Of course it sounds kinda crappy because you should trust your photographer. He/she has different point of view on you, than you have on yourself. The only thing for a photoshoot to be successful, is for me as a model to relax and trust.

O.M: And finally, where do you see yourself in three years’ time? What are your future goals and aspirations?

M.K: Frankly speaking everything is complicated. Living in Russia and making plans are absolutely polar things. So for now I live and work in a flow trying to speak up abroad. As in Russia it is kind of dangerous and not widely acceptable. But nevertheless I want personal exhibitions abroad in international galleries. And as for the dreams… I want my art, the themes and motifs I uncover and develop to be accepted here in Russia. To feel free to create and express myself and help my models to express themselves, their pains and problems.

https://www.originalmagazine.uk/home/interview-mariaandpavel

Interview with Photographer Maria Krugovaya and Artist Pavel Dyagilev

The series "Folds" imitates unfolded origamis. Once deployed, photographed and then redraw, these three-dimensional objects made of paper, become two-dimensional geometric images. The drawings highlight the duality between the second and the third dimension by playing with the effects of depth generated by the folds of the paper.

Folds

In the frame of his solo exhibition »Space Invader« Lukas was living and working in the exhibition space of Kunstverein Hannover. Being watched by CCTV at all times, he decided to move his whole equipment including bed, underneath the camera, outside its picture frame. A wooden staircase was then constructed on the opposite side of the space, lifting the viewer about 3,5 meters above ground. On top, a small screen displayed the live view of the CCTV camera that was depicting the viewer from the back. However, nothing of Lukas’ studio was seen in the picture frame – the viewer seemed to be alone in the room. Being inspired by Bruce Naumans closed circuit installations, Lukas created a hierarchical imbalance between himself, who was living and working inside the space all along, the viewers and the institution. In the context of the exhibition he was the one to be looked at, to be kept under surveillance, which he aimed to emphasise by constructing this »Watchtower« for guests. However, viewers would soon recognise themselves as still being watched by a higher instance – one that is hiding behind the curtain of a CCTV camera who’s eyes the artist already succeeded to escape by living underneath its radar. 

Photos by Volker Crone

Watchtower

I've been always fascinated by the science fiction genre where the present using a fictional future and thus prevents us from repeating and exacerbating the mistakes of the past.
My artwork, ''Journey to Mars'', visually reflects the influence on me by one science fiction novel,  where my heroes flowing to colonized Mars in anticipation of the unknown.
So that to understand what is stronger than hope or expectation?
How to overcome the fear of the unknown and not be disappointed in your expectations?

Journey to Mars

COLONY, 40x28cm, Mixed media on Paper

Avatars of the feelings in their natural habitats 

Animals

Space is the ultimate playground. In it, I have invented a new form of fun - Space-surfing. Children enjoy a feeling of zero gravity, hovering around the Moon, flying next to symbols of technology – spaceships and satellites.

These works are meant to convey a feeling of weightlessness, of playfulness, of freedom. The titles further emphasize the theme of the content and creation process – "Moon surfing", "Playing with Gravity", and "Weightless fun".

The technique I used also reflects a combination of playing around with materials, images, surfaces, transparencies, markers and technology. The backdrops of the works are pages from an old book about Space. On the book page, I placed painted transparencies with colored images of children. These, in turn, are based on photos of my own daughter I took with my new 48MBs Smartphone camera. Lastly, I arrange the materials in a household scanner to give life to the final collages.


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