Art and activism... Do you think art has the ability to make a real difference?
And should it strive to?
I think art and activism exist parallelly and combined they are even stronger. Art is the strongest tool to make a real change the world.
How important is the opinion of the audience to you? Does it affect what you are trying to portray and how?
I have a big audience, many followers, so I feel responsible for what I am doing. But it doesn't really affect what I do, as I portray my personal story. My purpose is to affect my audience. To make them think more broadly about social issues.
What are you hoping people take away from your work?
I hope people will realise that some of the big social issues in the world are shrouded by stigma. And I hope to inspire them to change something.
Can you tell us about your experience at Cube.Moscow?
What did you work on and how did this experience influence the outcome?
I worked on my project "Chamber N12" which represented my chamber where I had fought TB in 2015. In three weeks I created 2 paintings, an installation and developed a performance. I am very happy with the result!
Up until the end of the residency I didn't know what kind of performance
I would make, but in the end the right idea came to my mind.
Three paintings in my Chamber represent 3 hospital beds. There are no people on these beds, as I want the audience to take this role. This series of paintings
is named "Home sweet hospital. "The bedroom". My main idea is to show
that "living in the hospital" can happen to anyone. The hospital can become your home too, as it happened to me (I spent more than half a year in hospital). To make the installation "Endlessness" I used real drop-counters
and connected them with each other to show how each day becomes
endless for people in hospital.