When you think about your childhood in Ukraine, what images come to mind?

Forests, small lakes, strawberries, my grandmother’s face.

What is your last memory of Kyiv? 

Running away at the train station with my cousins, trying to hide from my parents, but not wanting to leave. 

Do you speak Ukrainian every day? If yes, with whom?

I grew up speaking Russian as I grew up in Kyiv when it was part of the Soviet Union. Even my parents spoke Russian. If you lived in the major cities, that was the first language. Unfortunately, my Ukrainian is terrible. In the capital everyone spoke Russian and they taught Russian in school. Even in third grade, they introduced Ukrainian as like a third language since the foreign language to study at school was German. I was exempt from my Ukrainian class because I was a professional gymnast and so I never learned the language. It was different in Western Ukraine, in Lviv and places like that, as they never lost the language. All those years I spoke Russian and I still speak Russian with my family now, even with my parents who live in Los Angeles. I speak Russian with my kids, too. We have an Ukrainian nanny that we have had for twelve years since Mirabelle, my second daughter, was born. Our nanny is from Western Ukraine so she speaks Ukrainian, but she also speaks Russian too. Now that the girls are big, she only really comes twice a week because we love her and I say to her: “Ok, no more Russian, only Ukrainian!”. So yes, I am going to take some lessons.

The Odesa book is full of youth and melancholy, of possibilities and malaise. Why did you choose Odesa for your photography project? 

I fell in love with the city and wanted to tell its story.
I’ll kind of back track, I’ll start with the beginning.
The first time I went back to Ukraine was when I was 19 years old. This was after the fall of Communism and when I had enough money to go back. When I was right out of college, I started to go see my grandmother every year because I was very close to her. You know, as a young photographer, you just start photographing. I was starting to discover photographing on the streets, it was something that was new to me because in college I was very much interested in creating stories, fictional stories, creating set ups; I was dressing up all my classmates, making up these weird scenarios, kind of like where I had gone to with painting, but I was trying to do that with photography. At that time I was going out with this guy and he was travelling a lot and I went to South America, we went to Brazil, and I fell in love with shooting on the streets. I was 25 years old, I was with my camera, shooting on the streets. So when I brought that to Ukraine, the idea of just walking around and capturing stuff, I realised that it was such an instinctive, such a very clear thing. At that time I was just shooting, I didn’t have any particular project in mind. As I grew as an artist, I started understanding. My first big project in Ukraine was called Gidropark, which is this work I made about a park in Kyiv that I used to go to as a kid. That was my first project where it was a series, meaning that I wasn’t just shooting everywhere, I was focusing on a place, focusing on a story. From then on, I like to work in series: I like to come up with an idea, whether it’s fictional, whether it’s documentary. 

When did you visit Odesa for the first time?

I went to Odesa for the first time in 2003 and I literally lost my mind. I was like “What is happening? It’s like a dream”. My grandmother passed away in 2004, and that summer I was in Kyiv and I started working on Gidropark. After I finished Gidropark and I started working on other projects, I had two kids… there was a lot of stuff going on. So I finally made it back to Odesa 10 years later, in 2013, and I didn’t know what I was going to do there. My husband couldn’t go with me, so I went with a friend who came with me at the last minute. She had never been to Eastern Europe before. I didn’t really know Odesa because I had only been there for three days 10 years before. I was shooting in black and white, walking around, and I started looking and trying to understand what I was going to do. It seemed clear once I came home and processed the films. It was clear that I wanted to tell the story of the city, but I wasn’t sure what it was. And then, after the invasion of Crimea and its annexation in 2014, I was curious to meet all these young soldiers from the Odesa Military Academy. The project became kind of sporadic.

Women are often the protagonists of your works. Their bodies are sensual and aware, never vulgar. How do you approach the subjects of your works? 

I love my female protagonists, both in my work that is more conceptual and fictional or the women I see on the streets. I think I am drawn to these women and I want to show them as they are, powerful yet vulnerable. The images have to be honest yet not necessarily of this world, I always look for dreamy elements to add to the stories.

You move between painting, photography, and video: how do you choose the language to address your artistic research? 

Photographs come first in my mind. I seem to always work in series. I find a subject or project and stick with it for a while. When I start a painting, it’s very organic: I just sit down and start working. Most of my ideas come from dreams or something I read and it triggers something in me. Films are a bit more complicated. It’s a longer process. First the idea, then the research, then the preproduction. You have to be much more prepared.

In YYY you put together photography, drawing and painting. How did you build this book? 

So, strangely YYY is the black sheep of all my projects because I always wanted to do a book that really told the story of me, how I see the world. So when Luca Reffo and Francesca Todde of Départ pour l’image got in touch with me and they said they want to do that kind of book, it was very exciting for me because it’s something that I’ve thought a lot about but have never done. And it is very hard to do it on your own, so it’s very nice to have somebody from outside come in, look at your stuff and say “Ok, I am going to put this world together”. YYY was created with Luca and Francesca. They really had a very clear idea of this dreamy book which showed different aspects of my practice. And they did such a great job! 

How did you meet them? They already know your varied artistic practice or did they discover it later? I mean, as publishers did they approach you as a photographer or did they already know you were a multidisciplinary artist? How did you share the materials with them to create such a compelling book? 

Francesca is a photographer and I think she knew my work from college, which would be my very early work. It was interesting because 16 years ago, I was pregnant with Sasha – at that time I was working in fashion a lot – and I did this project with Antonio Marras, who was designing for Kenzo. I got a job shooting for Kenzo, it was a big project and we ended up becoming friends because we did about six seasons of Kenzo. We shot in China, Japan, and South America. It was such a cool job, and I became really close with Antonio and his wife Patrizia. They said “Listen, we want to do this art project: Ten years of Antonio Marras. We want to do this project with you and we want to make a book”. So I went to Sardinia, we shot for four days and they hired all these characters, these models, older people, young people, and they went through all their archives.
We made a beautiful book with Antonio’s drawings and my photos. I think Francesca saw this project years ago. When she emailed me, I was done with Odesa, it was going to the printer in a few months.
And honestly I was like “Ok, there are these two young Italian artists who are very very talented, I looked at their work and I was like ‘wow!’”. Their aesthetic is beautiful, the idea is beautiful.
I realised I wanted to do this, so I went to Milan where I met them and I really liked them as people. So I said “Well, let’s do it”. But I had no idea that anybody was ever going to see this thing. I had this idea that it was going to be this small little thing with my weird work. I worked very closely with them in the layout, we went back and forth, but at the end, until you see the actual piece of work you have no idea. Last summer in late July, I was in Europe with my family. Luca and Francesca said “Oh, we heard you are going to be in Paris, let’s do a book signing”. At this point I haven’t seen the book, which then they write to me and say “We have a signing at Le Bal”. To which I replied “Le Bal…like the best bookstore in Paris, how did you get a signing at Le Bal?”. I go to Paris, I go to Le Bal and at this point, I still haven’t seen the book. I arrived and Francesca handed me the book and I literally was in shock. It was so beautiful. It was such an amazingly freeing experience. Also, I really felt we connected and they really told my story as an artist.

That’s incredible. I mean: two books in the same period! You said at a certain point you realised you wanted to work in series, why?

I still think that way, it’s interesting. Yet at the same time, there is another part of my brain that kind of wants to mess it all up, that wants to put a bunch of stuff together. It’s a very different way of working, and I think that when that happens is when I want to make collages, when I want to do fun imagery and paint on it. Even in the paintings, I find myself working in some sort of a series. I taught myself it all, I am like an outsider artist. I didn’t go to school for painting, I taught myself how to draw and everything. I just studied Photography. I had two years at Parsons in New York before I went to Photography as a major. The first year is like a foundation year, in which they teach you everything, and the second year I studied Graphic design, which actually helps me a lot, now that I think about it. With the immigrant parents and everything, you know, my dad was like “Photography is not a profession”…you know, in 1991 photography was not something a woman would do. 

So your dad didn’t want you to become a photographer?

It wasn’t like he didn’t want me to do it, he was like “How are you going to make a living?”. My choices were to photograph food, cars, and do advertising. 

And what does your dad say now?

I think he is very proud of me. 

Looking at your creations, your paintings and drawings, you look like a multidisciplinary artist, it would be a limiting label to talk about you just as a photographer.

I find a lot of times that people have to put you in some category, but I don’t really think of myself as a photographer anymore. For a long time now, I like so many different ways of expressing myself, so many different ways of working.

The images of Beware, my lovely remind me of the works of Felice Casorati and Balthus, who are your favourite artists. Which young artists do you follow? 

My favourite artists are Francis Picabia, Picasso, Francis Bacon, Man Ray, Paula Rego and Diane Arbus. From the present day, I love the work of Mamma Andersson, Jockum Nordstrom, Bill Hanson, David Noonan and Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

It looks like texts and words have a certain importance in your work: you published the book Odesa with poems by the Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky, and the titles of your artworks always sound evocative and intense. How do you choose these titles, like Beware, my lovely?

It’s a funny thing because all my paintings are named after film noir movies or books. All the paintings, they all have titles from some film noir: Obscure, Famous.

Do you have a work routine? If yes, can you tell us about it? 

I travel a lot so it’s hard to have a routine, but when I am home I go to my painting studio as much as possible. I get a coffee on the way and write in my journal, then I start working at the studio, mostly on paintings 

You are also a director, in which role you helped build the image of the iconic ‘90s rock group The Smashing Pumpkins. How do you manage working creatively with musicians?

That was so long ago, I was in my early 20s and I was very excited about making art. That was a fun time in music and it was full of experimentation. I am glad I was able to make videos at that time. 

Do you already know what your next project is? 

I am in the process of finishing my new book Malanka, coming out early spring 2024 with Edition Patrick Frey. I am really excited about that. I am also working on a new script for a short film and a new painting series. But right now, I just want to go back to Ukraine and just put my feet on the ground.

PHOTO CREDIT

Where the Sidewalk Ends  2019 watercolor on paper 30” by 66”
Play Boy Bunny Odesa ,2019
The Wise Owl ,2004
On the Ship, Odesa 2016
Boy with Bear, Malanka ,2019
Warrior Girls # 1, 2021
Anya in December,Odesa 2018
In the Middle of Nowhere, Odesa 2016
Tris and Ania, from Mystery of a Memory , Kyiv 2019
Ania sunbathing, from Mystery of a Memory , Kyiv 2019
Sasha at Evgeny’s Studio, Odesa 2018 

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