“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.” “Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.”
– Marcel Proust
My artistic aim is to overcome my marginality through creating a utopian vision, which reconnects me to my childhood. My art explores my status as a half-Asian artist, who doesn’t fit in any cultural hegemony and who has no sense of “home” in post-colonialist, feminist and psychoanalytical terms. A specimen of globalization, I was born in Kazakhstan, my father - North Korean and my mother - Russian. Having caught a glimpse of the USSR, I have a conflicting perception of cultural systems. Unable to assimilate into any culture, I am a banished outsider with no origins.
Stemming from this inability to integrate, I am drawn to creating a utopia through my performance art: a paradise, where I can reinvent myself to whom I truly want to be, and not what the mundane reality holds in store. This performativity enables me to come to terms with my depression, where the saddening sense of nostalgia used to permeate my existence and taint every experience of reality that I had. My performances take the shape of drag queen style, “mockumentary” music videos, where I reenact pop culture songs, which bring me closer to this infantile state of euphoria and inner freedom. I work in a range of media including performance, film and painting. Based in Berkeley, California, I am also a member of the Chelsea Arts Club in London, I have exhibited at Whitechapel Gallery and ICA London, Whitechapel Gallery as well as the LA Pacific Design Center and the NYC Untitled Space.