Estrangement

Oil on canvas
60cm x 80cm

Anastasia Borodina is a bright emerging artist renewing classical traditions of depicting humans in complex interactions with their environment and neighbours. She grew up in the North Caucasus and was graduated with honours from the Ilya Repin’s academy of fine arts in Saint-Petersburg. In the academy, Anastasia learned from the best representatives of the Russian classical school of painting in the workshop of renowned artist Yuri Kalyuta. Currently, Anastasia is living and working in Manchester.

Over the past couple of years, Zoom has become one of the main communication tools for people who can’t meet face-to-face. On the one hand, this expands the possibilities and makes meetings available when it is not physically possible, but on the other hand especially in the long run, it turns communication into an imitation and thereby alienates people from each other. I deliberately chose a small format for the portraits – so that they would be close as possible to ones we are used to seeing people on a computer screen. I tried to convey the state of the people who can communicate solely online for a long time, my feeling as an interlocutor on the other side of the screen. To do this, I used more expressive techniques for applying paint on canvas than I usually do. It was essential for me to revive this space in which the interlocutors are. And the contrast of the static position of the portraits with such a dynamic manner of painting seems me the most suitable for this case.