When viewing the images of Katerina Belkina, it is not entirely clear what medium is before you — a photograph or a painting? In her works, the Russian artist uniquely combines photographic techniques with forms of visual art. Using a digital brush, she gives her photographic works a weightless, dreamlike atmosphere, elevating the reality of the snapshot to an expanded and enhanced reality. In doing so, she creates her own genre. The trilingual artist's book, Katerina Belkina. My Work Is My Personal Theatre (German, English, Russian), presents the artist's work in the context of art history.

At the center of her works is always the human, mostly the woman. Belkina herself takes on a triple role: she is the subject, director, and visual artist all at once. Based on feminist principles, the Russian artist shows everyday life from a female perspective, portraying women not as objects but as sources of energy. In her image series Not a Man's World, she confidently presents herself smoking a pipe and raising a pointed finger. Belkina does not seek to condemn but rather to find answers to the question: who is she as a woman, artist, mother, or member of society?

Katerina Belkina grew up with her mother, also an artist, in the southeastern part of European Russia. During this time, she absorbed the visual vocabulary of the Renaissance and socialist realism and developed her own visual language — the artificially exaggerated hyperrealistic images that characterize her works. In addition to art historical essays, the art book also includes an interview with the artist, in which she talks about her work and creative process.

Published by SHIFT BOOKS
Hardcover
252 pages
325 x 230 mm
ISBN 9783948174057