BIOGRAPHY

Born in 2003 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, I began drawing from the very first day I learned how to hold a pencil. I didn’t grow up in a particularly creative or artistic environment—both of my grandfathers were engineers (though one later became a writer), my grandmother was a teacher, and my parents owned several businesses. While my family always recognized the importance of basic art education—like many with post-Soviet backgrounds—they did not support the idea of pursuing art as a career. In fact, they were completely against it. Except for my mum. That’s how I enrolled in my first art school at the age of five.

Over the next 11 years, I attended several art schools and colleges, dropping out in the final year before graduation and starting over at a new school. The reason? I didn’t want the way I held a pencil or a brush to be tied to a specific school. I wanted to build my own methods and vision—even though at the time, I had no clear idea of what I was doing. Looking back, I’m grateful to myself for making those decisions.

After gaining confidence in both practical skills and artistic vision and giving up fine art and any family expectations, I decided to step into a world of calling myself an artist out loud and presenting my work to public. I started thinking about Romantic Symbolism.

At 17, I received an invitation to participate in my first show at the contemporary art gallery New Sincerity in Moscow. I was so overwhelmed. I was irresistibly awkward, but it was the beginning of my art network. Over the next five years, I collaborated with more than nine international art institutions and galleries, curated four art shows (including two solo exhibitions), had multiple international publications, and hosted several public artists talks and workshops.

Since 2023, I’ve been living in Sydney, Australia. With the incredible support of my family, I’m proud to now call this country home. Starting from a blank slate, this new chapter has been an amazing beginning. I’ve continued producing new work, with my focus gradually shifting toward sculpture and mixed media. Within the first year of moving, I held my first solo exhibition in Australia and met incredible fellow artists, curators, and people who share my vision.

I believe this is the start of a very exciting journey.

And I am very grateful to be a part of it.

Artist Statement

Growing up in a diverse, intercultural environment, I was exposed to the rich heritages of both my family and the region I come from. These different influences blended together to create a complex, almost contradictory, yet unique foundation for my artistic symbolism and identity. Rooted in the comparison of my family’s Turkic and Slavic heritages, as well as the Muslim, Christian Orthodox, and Atheistic beliefs within it, a mythology of my own and a symbolic system started to shape themselves.

From a very young age, I was always driven by the idea of unveiling the mystery — a general life riddle; pursuing the plot of a painting as an ancient belief, looking at myself and the others through the prism of unfamiliarity, a mythological creature you are eager to explore from the core. Reshaping the collective and personal memory to create a new perspective of the order of things; and building a bridge between reality and so-called dream, the subconscious and fantasy. Since a very young age, I have always believed that this bridge is built through art.

My earliest practice consisted of painting and sculpting — my main mediums to this day. My family, particularly my mother and grandparents, kept a lot of my earliest work, dating back to when I was two years old and earlier. I remember trying to spread what I was doing outside of a white sheet, as many kids do: on the walls, skin, toilet paper, snow in winter.  Making small performances for my mother as a part of my gratitude to her. I was in my most active communication period, yet I stayed verbally quiet all that time. I believe that this is the ideal representation of art being a life necessity, a language that you earn and learn. 

Art has been with me on an unconditional level for a long time as I've dedicated myself to it for as long as I can remember. But now, I can identify it as a way of communicating ideas and visions that are hard to explain in any other way. It’s difficult to speak of my practice separately from who I am as a person and what I experience on a personal level. It’s a way of sharing — a very special way, one that keeps me going. And sharing gives me hope. Hope for unveiling the beautiful mystery, both within and outside our world.