Yuliya Lanina

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Yuliya, I first saw your work at Artpace in San Antonio, while I was traveling during my residency at UT, Austin. The gallery was on the way to the place that I had rented and I went inside to see if anything interesting was happening. I am so glad I did stop and got to experience your installation Mother/Land. How did this installation come about?

Yuliya Lanina: I was very fortunate to have been selected for participating in Artpace by curator Gabriella Rangel and to have time, space and resources to dedicate to the project. The installation that you saw was about the war in Ukraine. My father was from Ukraine and my mother from Russia, so the war affected me to my core. Since Russia invaded Ukraine I could not do anything other than follow the news. My previous work and projects had lost their meaning and I had stopped working for a while. As weeks went by, I felt that I needed to find a way to express how I was feeling and I started making drawings about what I was witnessing: people, events, feelings. I would spend hours making drawings while listening to the news. While at Artpace, I turned my drawings into an animation that was projected on the large wall at the gallery, and that scrolled through slightly animated images to create a viewing experience similar to scrolling war-related stories on social media. My collaborator Nina C. Young created a soundtrack out of samples of a Ukrainian hymn and her field recordings, These added another layer to the animation. Having a large space allowed me to work on large paper scrolls that I covered the walls with. Every day I would add a layer of writing to the scrolls. Eventually these scrolls became large one-eyed flowers that were spread around the gallery to complement a wall collage that represented my uneasy relationship with Russia, the country where I grew up, as well as my relationship with my mother, whom I lost to cancer when I was a teenager. 

NDEREOM: I am naturally drawn to flowers and they are a subject in your creative practice. I see in your work a mix of what could be flowers from the Americas as well as from Europe. What is the impetus of bringing these sexual creatures into what you do artistically? How do flowers from two distant parts of the planet coexist in your praxis at a conceptual but also at an emotional level?

YL: I am from both continents. I spent more than 30 years in the US, yet my formative years were spent in Soviet Union. My father and I went camping a lot when I was a kid and we also traveled around the Soviet Union every summer. The flowers in the show stem from my memories of seeing vast poppy fields, a common sight in Eastern Europe, and being in awe of their beauty. Flowers always bring me joy. They are so complicated, so beautiful and multidimensional. I strive to bring all these qualities into my work.

NDEREOM: We met in person at the University of Texas at Austin, where you teach, and where I was a Senior lecturer. It was great to have the opportunity to interact with you after seen your work at Artpace. How are you traveling through Texas mentally and spiritually, whatever spiritually might mean for you?

YL: I’ve been in Austin now for 13 years now and yet I still feel like a foreigner here. Culturally it is very different. But there are plusses and minuses wherever you go. Going away to residencies during summers definitely helps to keep me sane.

NDEREOM: I admit that, while I have been to Texas through many different decades during this longer stay I was culture shocked and, at times, I would ponder on feeling more at home in Sarajevo than in Austin. It took me a long while to get my feet on the ground on the Lone Star and I thank my caring neighbors for this. I am wondering what it takes to be a creative, a woman presenting person and yes, a foreigner, in Texas at this time in History with a big H?

YL: I definitely feel like an outsider. The good news is that Austin does have a great creative and hardworking community. I also met wonderful artists from San Antonio as well as Houston and Dallas. My art can be created in any environment. Early on, I had to work in my kitchen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. What I dislike is driving or spending time in traffic. So I turned my garage and half of my bedroom in Austin into a studio. I wish I had a larger space to create, but it’s definitely an upgrade from my Brooklyn kitchen.

NDEREOM: Pierre Molinier emerges in my mind as I watch your animations, installations and public pieces. There is the female Humpty Dumpty that you put together using, among other items, the legs of a female mannequin wearing fishnet stockings. In your case, what would be the fetish is inhabited by you, from within, rather than being sexualized by a male person, I think. Anything to say about this?

YL: I guess there are many aspects to it. I came to New York from Moscow, Russia without my family, at the age of 17, and everywhere I turned I felt that people projected their stuff onto me. I was this exotic young foreigner. I even remember one guy in Long Island calling his friends over so they could see this exotic Russian. This was in the early 1990s before a large wave of Jewish refugees from Russia arrived in the country. People, especially men, would treat me not as a person but as some exotic Russian doll. I often felt like a magnet for creepy men who flew to me like moths to a light bulb and didn’t care that that I wasn’t attracted to them. It took me to completely strip myself of all female attributes (hair, female identifying clothes, the way I walk) to finally be left alone. And so I play with that in my work. 

NDEREOM: Monsters or monstrous beings are so present in your work. I grew up engaging monsters in my dreams and came to fear some of them, especially at night. How do you deal with these uncanny creatures? I am also wondering about their therapeutic roles for you.

YL: My father used to collect Mongolian masks. I slept in a living room when I was a kid and these masks were the last thing I’d see before going to bed, and the first thing I’d see upon waking up. I was terrified of their scary faces, skulls, bloody mouths. I was also afraid of dark and scary movies, and my brother would tease me about monsters under the bed. However, making my own horror films is fun. The truth is these cannot be fictional horror films if they are about my own life. I don’t see the creatures that I make as scary. They give me comfort. In some ways they are my self-portraits. I guess because of the trauma I’ve experienced as an adolescent I started viewing myself as a monster, and so these are my relatives in some way. They are working things out– just like–me and they are harmless.

NDEREOM: There is humor within your animated landscapes, installations and theater productions. What makes you laugh these days where catastrophe seems to loom in the landscape in the shape of narcissistic creatures with penises trying to dominate our planet?

YL: When I get very stressed everything becomes funny to me. I am not sure why. And so, I find humor in the most painful places. Humor allows me to step outside myself and discover the absurd and ridiculous about my condition.

NDEREOM: You lived in the South Bronx, a place dear to me. I am biased. And to me the South Bronx is a realm like no other place in this country. What are some of your memories of your times here/there?

YL: One of my favorite things to do was to walk in Van Cortland Park. I would go there and just spend hours walking around. I loved it. It was always empty–no people. Later I learned it was because of the high level of crime there, but at the time I didn’t know it and the park felt like my safe space. My mother’s favorite place was the Bronx Botanical Garden. Towards the end of her life we would go there every weekend. I absolutely adore that place. One of the most profound moments happened for me in the Bronx. It was a hot summer day after my mother died (she had a long battle with cancer and the last two years were particularly painful), and I was feeling thirsty walking through a playground where my mom used to sit. I bought a $1 bottle of water and I took a sip. As I took the sip I felt the sun on my face, I heard the children laughter on the playground and in that moment I understood for the first time why my mother was holding on to life for so long. These moments are what make life worth living.

NDEREOM: I will stop here. I know that you have twins, teach, prepare for exhibitions, travel, and care for yourself. Thank you so much for engaging these seemingly random questions. I hope to see you again in Austin or in the Bronx.

YL: Thank you, Nicolas, for this wonderful conversation. Can’t wait to see you in the Bronx!

All images Courtesy of Yuliya Lanina

Yuliya Lanina’s links: Website / Instagram / UT

Yuliya Lanina is an interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges traditional media with new technologies. She creates alternate realities in her works—ones based on sexuality, trauma and identity.

Lanina has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, including SXSW Interactive (TX), Seoul Art Museum (Korea), SIGGRAPH Asia (Japan), 798 Beijing Biennial (China), Cleveland Institute of Art (OH), Patrick Heide Gallery (London, UK), Teatro Santa Ana (Mexico), Blanton Museum of Art (TX), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia), Vienna MuseumsQuartier (Austria) and Xposed gallery on New York City’s High Line.

Lanina's professional honors include fellowships and scholarships from Fulbright (Vienna, Austria), Headlands Art Center (CA), Yaddo (NY), Artpace (SA), Yaddo Fellowship (NY), Marble House Project (NY), The Puffin Foundation (NJ), and Honorable citation from New York State Assembly (NYC). Lanina’s most recent animation Gefilte Fish won Best International Short Film at Tamuz Shomron Film Festival (Israel) and an Honorable Mention at the Female Eye Film Festival (Canada).

Lanina is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin.