From Academic Painting to Biomaterials: Kristina Purshina’s Route into Contemporary Art

– How did you come to contemporary art?

Gradually!

As a child I finished art school, and later a college course qualifying me as a decorative and display artist — but then my life went in a different professional direction. About ten years ago I started drawing again: first as a sketcher, then an illustrator, then a self-taught watercolourist. The whole time I wanted something more — to try new approaches, to make work differently — but I couldn’t put my finger on what I was reaching for.

So I decided to take the classical route: I enrolled at the Stroganov Academy to study monumental painting and graduated with distinction. During my studies I realized that simply copying, or painting pretty landscapes and portraits, didn’t interest me — and applied art didn’t draw me either. In that same period I started going to exhibitions in earnest, contemporary art among them, and I understood that I wanted to make work filled with meaning: that art isn’t only a visual form but a means of expressing yourself, a kind of “language” I use to talk to the world.

– What was hardest at the start, and what difficulties did you run into?

At the start the hardest thing was not knowing where or how to move within contemporary art — no information, no strategy. Later, various stereotypes and fears started getting in the way: fear of making a mistake, fear of criticism.

– Which of your ideas about the contemporary art world turned out to be right, and what was completely different?

My first ideas about contemporary art were hazy. A lot of it seemed impenetrable, and it was hard to shift from a purely visual response to deeper analysis and reflection.

It felt as though contemporary art was something strange, with no room in it for painting. Over time, though — through studying, going to exhibitions and joining guided tours with mediators — I built up a visual vocabulary, critical thinking, and the ability to analyze work not just aesthetically but in terms of meaning and context.

– Tell us about studying at MSCA. Was it an interesting experience, and what was most valuable? Was it hard to get in?

I studied at MSCA, the Moscow School of Contemporary Art. Before going there I spent a long time researching contemporary art schools and their programs, and I talked it through with Maria. I chose the school that matched what I wanted and where I was heading. Studying there was as useful as it could possibly have been — I began my path into contemporary art while I was still a student. Exhibitions were running constantly as part of the program, and we had the chance to show our projects at serious institutional venues and get feedback.

We also gained experience of curatorial work and of working in artist collectives. We put together solid portfolios, CVs and websites. We came away with a picture of how the art business is put together and how to grow within it. And even after graduating we keep up our relationship with the school — it supports its alumni’s initiatives and does everything it can to help them develop and gain a foothold in the art market.

Getting in involved several stages: putting together a portfolio and a statement of motivation — Maria helped me with that too, in one-to-one mentoring — and then an interview with the school’s director.

– Tell us about your work (we’ll include photographs). We’d love to get right into it!

Let me show you this piece — it’s my graduation project. After I finished school it was also shown in “GRADUATION 24” at Zaryadye, among the best graduation works of 2024.

The exhibition had two labels — one for the painting and one for the objects.

1) Painting. Kristina Purshina. Oil on canvas, 150 × 200 cm, 2024

“Take a brush with you into sleep, and in your dreams the flowers will drink their fill.” Howard Lovecraft, “The Horror in the Museum”

In an enchanted forest, on the border between the real and the imagined, something mysterious is happening. It is a liminal space where the sharp lines dissolve — between the “city” and untouched nature, between the human world and the non-human, the physical and the spiritual, the synthetic and the biological, sleep and waking. Anything is possible here.

Once, in a dream, I went out to paint en plein air in a forest like that and met a prophesying octopus, who foretold the coming end of human civilisation. “But the end of one thing can be the beginning of another, and you will be able to go on living — for that you need to find a new form,” he told me, and I set off to solve the riddle. After a while I found the answer and, drawing on the experience of my ancestors, I made dolls. They became vessels for the metamorphoses that would carry me towards a new form of being.

The proof of this mystical experience is the artistic practice itself, which resulted in a canvas recording the visions born in the liminal space of the forest.

2) Objects. Kristina Purshina. Series “CTRL+S”. Plastic, materials of animal origin, fabric grown from a kombucha culture, pigment, latex, silk thread, bioplastic. Dimensions variable. 2024

“You see… it is very far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy. But it is like casting off an old shell. There is nothing sad about that…” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”

Some of the objects in this project are made from what I call mushroom leather. It’s a sheet grown from a kombucha culture — the SCOBY everyone knows from fermented tea. In this project working with the culture was a trial run, an experiment, but I decided to carry the research further and make a separate project, which I’m working on now.

The process, the pace and the end result depend entirely on the culture, though — how it grows, how long it takes, how strong and usable the resulting fabric turns out to be. Right now I’m at the stage of fermenting, growing and curing it.

– What matters to you in art — your own and art in general — for it to catch you and resonate?

– Are there artists whose work you admire and find inspiring? If so, why?

I admire and draw inspiration from artists of many different eras. In contemporary art, that would be Yuri Albert, Irina Korina, Mayana Nassybulova, the art duo CrocodilPower, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Wolfgang Tillmans, Pierre Huyghe and others.

– Tell us what projects have happened for you in this time. Was our program useful to you, and if so, why?

Before I joined the program I was in a particular state… I no longer wanted to work the way I had been, but I couldn’t yet see how to work differently. Intuitively I felt drawn to contemporary art, but I didn’t know what it was. I had a certain amount of scattered information, which left me stuck more than it helped.

And then the program came along. Thanks to it I came away with a clear understanding of what contemporary art is and how it differs from what I’d been doing before. I started to grasp the structure of the art market and its institutions, and how they work. A strategy for my development began to take shape.

Over the course of the program I got important feedback on my portfolio, and it made it stronger — as strong as it could be at that point. I developed a project concept within contemporary art proper, and I finally understood that this was the direction I wanted to move in and keep studying.

Besides the program, I also took mentoring sessions with Maria. In them we mapped out my plan of action, worked out which school I should apply to given what I wanted and needed, and prepared the documents for my application and interview.