13.07.2018
Popova Natalia
"Each of my works shows the paradox of how a dead material like plastic is able to form a sense of living, breathing, without imitating the naturalistic. What gives rise to this feeling of being alive? How is the experience of being alive experienced? Why has man lost his connection to nature and how can he regain it? I do not show the surface, but the hidden processes of nature's activity".
Education:
- 2022 – MMOMA, Free Workshops, Moscow, Russia.
- 2013 – IDS, Interior Design and Architecture, Moscow, Russia.
- 2011 – European University, Enterprise Economics, Kiev, Ukraine.
"Each of my works shows the paradox of how a dead material like plastic is able to form a sense of living, breathing, without imitating the naturalistic. What gives rise to this feeling of being alive? How is the experience of being alive experienced? Why has man lost his connection to nature and how can he regain it? I do not show the surface, but the hidden processes of nature's activity".
I observe the development and destruction of natural forms, the growth phases of plant tissue, soil and rocks, the movement of water. I combine the states I absorb from observation with techniques that use the four elements: soaking materials in liquids, burning and melting in fire, blowing with hot air, stabilisation with stones and gypsum. I also use plastic material that I find discarded from forests and bodies of water, which has already undergone a transformation by natural forces and has begun to come alive. I retranslate it in the works, revealing this acquired aspect of liveliness.
I have been practicing meditation, yoga, tai chi for a long time. It allows you to experience a deep state of connection with nature. My goal is for those who look at my works to feel this state. Natalia Popova
EXHIBITIONS:
- 2021 – Festival d' Art Sacre Compiegne, France, Compiegne.
- 2021 – 47th Russian Antique Salon, Moscow, Russia.
- 2021 – Art3f, Lux Expo, Luxembourg.
- 2021 – collaborative project with recycled clothing brand LAVA COPENHAGEN for Monaco Streaming Film Festival 2021, France, Monaco.
- 2021 – Earth. Version of 2021 – What came after?, group exhibition Moscow, Darwin Museum.
- 2020 – InanimateAlive, solo exhibition, Space U, Moscow, Russia.
- 2020 – group exhibition, Gstaad, Huus hotel, Gstaad, Switzerland.
- 2017 – Terra Tabula. Writings on Earth, group exhibition, Na Kashirke gallery, Moscow, Russia.
«InanimateAlive»
"My inspiration stems from unseen processes in living matter. It's not just animals and plants. Rocks, rivers, soil-all of it lives at such a slow pace that we don't perceive it as living, although it is not. I am interested in the phenomenon of invisible and how it can be felt. How do we experience the living? How do we experience this cognition? I nurture my works so that the beholder can find their own answers to these questions.
To create my works I fully or partially use different kinds of plastic materials, often second-hand ones, and recycle them in a peculiar way. I imagine how nature would have treated these materials and recreate metaphors for these processes: soaking, melting, building up, breaking down and more. Plastic is perhaps the most dead material on earth and I reflect on what fills things with what makes us feel alive in them. It's not the outward appearance. A stuffed animal, no matter how lifelike, does not evoke a sense of life. How do we sense that something is alive? Rocks carved by the surf, tree bark, ancient ruins or sparks in the eyes of a dancer. All this does not exist initially, but arrives only as a possibility. And only then it dissolves, takes that form that can appear before the gaze. The dissolving itself is something we cannot see, because everything that can be seen is only a consequence of it. We are interested in this "force" that brings something into the light. It is that which cannot be seen, but it is that which gives the feeling of being alive".
Works
