Lena Chigrina’s story

The course is incredibly rich — so many references, so many brilliant examples that I now start to notice out in the world. Those names, those movements: it’s as if the world has become many-sided.

@lena_moonspector_art

Lena Chigrina — Artist

Jump to a question:

1. How is art part of your life?

2. What specifically wasn’t working before the course?

3. What stayed with you most from module 2? What were the insights?

4. How would you describe Maria? How do you find the way she teaches and gives feedback?

5. Did you have any doubts before signing up?

6. What did module 2 give you? Can you compare yourself before it and after the final presentation?

7. What is contemporary art to you?

8. What’s the ideal picture in your head — who would you like to become?

– How is art part of your life? Tell us a bit more about yourself

– I’ve drawn since childhood; my father was a self-taught artist. I’ve always drawn a great deal. I tried myself in other fields with nothing to do with art, but I always came back to the same thing: I couldn’t find myself there, I couldn’t see a future in it, and I had no clear sense of what I was drawing or why. At the same time I wanted to say something. I could paint very beautiful flowers, for instance, but I don’t want to! I can do it, but something inside resists and pulls me in a different direction. And I wanted to work out which direction that was. Then again, I knew very little about what was happening in contemporary art in Russia, and I was barely familiar with the history of contemporary art in general, with the twentieth century. I’d finished another course before this one, but on Maria’s course I managed to put together a picture of who I am and what I have to say. And whether I want to say anything at all? It turned out I do! I’m clearly in the right place now, something has clicked, and I’ll keep developing it. After finishing module 1 I plan to simply blow up the market! I’ll send my portfolio everywhere — my document pack is like the stamp on an envelope for me. Without a stamp you won’t get anywhere; you need to be addressed to somewhere, to some field. And thanks to Maria’s course I found that field. I also discovered a lot of media I used to be nervous about trying. I stepped out of the 2D space of the canvas and found that I enjoy making artefacts, conveying ideas through different media and textures. I simply widened the range of what I can affect. Before that I had a tiny space to work in and I always felt I was missing the mark. Now the space is huge — I want to try everything. Maria even said as much during the project review: you can see this person is looking for different approaches, trying things out. And that’s the result of the course; otherwise I’d have stayed shut inside the canvas.

– What specifically wasn’t working before the course? Maybe some particular situations come to mind

– For a start, I only found out what an open call even was a month before the course. I had no idea how people get into open calls and galleries. That’s exactly why I signed up — to understand how it works. On top of that, I still hadn’t sold any of my work, and I’d accumulated a whole cupboard of it. I wanted either to understand where I was heading, so I could make work in a new context, or to start doing something with what I already had — at the very least show it, so that someone other than me would see it! The problem I felt inside was not understanding what these works were saying. They were just a run of experiments, each one new to me. I couldn’t pull them together enough even to see what my art was about. That’s precisely what I was missing, and what Maria managed to convey in her lectures and her feedback.

– What stayed with you most from module 2? What were the insights?

– First of all, one of the things I gained was understanding who I am. That insight arrived somewhere after the lecture on space and meaning, where a work isn’t taken as the result of a thought process but as something that sets a thought process going in the viewer. Performance, sound art and video art all play on that same string. It isn’t the result of something; it’s something you see that starts producing things inside you, setting off the thought processes that are themselves the art. I hadn’t grasped that before. On top of that, before the course I had no contact with contemporary artists — I simply had nobody to discuss my art with. And I never heard any feedback on what I was doing. That bred a lot of fears: I’ll never be recognized, maybe I’m doing something silly altogether. But when I saw the support from people on the course and the openness of other artists, who also have doubts yet still show where their experiments and reflections have taken them, it built up a pool of confidence: everyone goes through the same stages, and it’s normal to have doubts about your own art.

– How would you describe Maria? How do you find the way she teaches and gives feedback?

– I didn’t know Maria personally, but on the course we met as student and teacher. I’d followed her on social media for a long time and watched every video on her channel. The first time I saw her was in a video interview with an artist. Maybe my own circle just doesn’t include people of that calibre, but she struck me as an absolutely extraordinary person. Her thinking is so concentrated that listening to a lecture several times is genuinely normal. They’re clear, but each time you find several more layers of meaning. I’ll be taking one idea in, and while I’m doing that she’s already voiced several more that you can only properly take in later. To lay out information like that, everything inside a person has to be in perfect order. Maria is very deep, very tactful and very warm. That sets the tone for the whole course, because when you find a friend in your teacher — someone who won’t belittle your ideas but will still give useful, constructive criticism — all the information comes from a place of love, and that lands completely differently. The course is incredibly rich — so many references, so many brilliant examples that I now start to notice out in the world. Those names, those movements: it’s as if the world has become many-sided.

– Did you have any doubts before signing up?

– I joined at module 2. Before module 1 I wasn’t sure I could afford it, but I found a solution in paying by instalments. Mentally, though, I was already there. Every video I watched hit home for me; it was like a gulp of fresh air — you don’t resist air when you need to breathe to live, so there was no question of doubting whether I needed this. I wanted that information, so I went and got it. I came to it through other doors, of course, but they led me to this course and everything worked out.

– What did module 2 give you? Can you compare yourself before it and after the final presentation?

– First, I worked on the themes that interest me. Out of my whole range of themes (Maria drew out whatever interested us as best she could) I dug further into them: what hurts, what is straining to be said to the world? I found those themes for myself. Second, I realized I’d been working on a project for a long time without knowing it. I gathered my ideas together and saw the desk in front of me and the objects I’d be working on. Thanks to Maria I came out of a daze and focused on what genuinely matters to me. I had a question — is what I’m making even art? And I answered it with the help of the course. Now that I’ve made sense of my art, I plan to move on to module 1 and learn to present my ideas in the art world.

– What is contemporary art to you?

– For me it’s the freedom to speak. Even on a difficult social subject you still have that freedom, and you will be heard. I can share my point of view in comments or on my own channels, but when you let yourself go out into society and put your point of view where it can be heard and seen by everyone interested in a contemporary message, that’s a real chance to touch people’s hearts and minds and send ripples out around you. That, I think, is the artist’s mission — to create the waves that, together with other artists working on the same themes, shape an attitude towards what’s happening in society.
I loved the course, and I loved the way people talk to each other inside it. I used to think artists were arrogant people who didn’t care about anyone else, and it turned out they’re sensitive souls who feel everything around them far more strongly and vividly. And they immediately try to do something with it. That’s pure magic! Artists are magicians. They have everything it takes.

– What’s the ideal picture in your head — who would you like to become?

– First of all, I want to be visible. I want to position myself on the platforms that matter. But I think the main thing won’t be riding the hype — it’ll be doing some kind of work for society, turning all my reflection into action, and through that developing myself and the world around me. I want to go deep.

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