Lana Svirezheva

At the tender age of four I decided to be an artist, while looking up at St. Sebastian by Sodoma in the Uffizi Gallery— a suffering body both exposed and luminous. Devotional and mannerist artworks continued influencing my aesthetic sensibilities as I grew up.

​

As a professional artist I make drawings and paintings in graphite, pastel, oils, and digitally, giving physical form to transcendent experiences of living beings under pressure. This does not neccessarily mean that all my figures are solely unhappy, as there are always many currents of feeling existing simultaneously in a body.

​

My interest lies in observing human and animal bodies, but distorting them in refined, creative ways: I tend to accentuate sinews, muscles, and bones, partly out of aesthetic fascination, but also to expose their vulnerability and emotional charge.

​

Personally, I do not feel like I have truly experienced something unless I have drawn it. This process of drawing for me is a sort of identification, an attempt at merging with others, or prayer. The work thereby takes on certain tensions, swinging between tenderness and the grotesque, the humourous and eerie, empathy and distance. In terms of my craft, I work with the great preciscion and care that my subject demands of me.

​

Through my images, I ask the viewer to stay with their mixed feelings, especially in moments of aversion: For what begins as discomfort can shift into empathy. I am interested in that movement— where distance gives way to a more intimate, and not entirely comfortable, recognition. In this space, the boundary between self and other becomes less stable, allowing for a different kind of attention and proximity. I present my work internationally in exhibitions and am currently expanding my practice into artist picture books.