When viewing Katerina Belkina’s paintings, you cannot discern what medium you are looking at — photography or painting. Using a digital brush, the Russian artist lends her photographic images a weightless and dreamlike atmosphere that elevates the image to an expanded, altered reality. In doing so, she creates a unique genre of her own. The trilingual (German, English, Russian) illustrated book – „Katerina Belkina – My Work Is My Personal Theatre“, which has been released on October 15th by KOCMOC Publishing Space, presents for the first time the artist‘s work in an art-historical context.

People – primarily women – have always been the centre of Belkina’s work, where she casts herself simultaneously as the subject, the director of the mise-en-scène, and the artist. Led by feminist principles, she shows everyday life from a female perspective, whereby she portrays the woman as an object but, above all, as energy. In her series „Not a Man‘s World“, she presents herself smoking a pipe and raising her index finger with self-confidence. Belkina, however, does not want to denounce, but instead seeks answers to the question: who is she as a woman, an artist, a mother, or a member of society?

Katerina Belkina grew up with her mother, also an artist, in the European south-east of Russia. During this period, she adopted the visual vocabularies of the Renaissance and socialist realism. They became the basis of her pictorial language, typical for which are artificially exaggerated photorealistic images that draw close associations with hyperrealism. In addition to essays on Belkina‘s work, the book will include an interview with the artist, in which she talks about her work and her creative practices.

Katerina Belkina

Early on, Katerina Belkina (*1974) knew about her exceptional talent to see the world through different eyes. Born in Samara in the southeast of European Russia, she was brought up in a creative atmosphere by her mother, a visual artist. Her education at the Art Academy and the Michael MusorinSchool of Photography in Samara gave her the tools to visualize her ideas. Exhibitions of her sublime, mystic self-portraits ensued in Moscow and Paris. Katerina Belkina was nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize (comparable to the British Turner Prize) in Moscow in 2007. She won the International Lucas-Cranach-Prize in 2015 and the prestigious Hasselblad Masters Award in 2016. Currently she lives and works in Werder (Havel).

KOCMOC – Publishing Space

KOCMOC [Russian: cosmos] has been designing and publishing art books, exhibition catalogues, artist books, and magazines as print and digital media since 2018. The still young Berlin-based publishing house operates according to the highest quality and environmental standards in cooperation with sustainability-oriented printing houses in Germany. KOCMOC focuses on promoting artists from Eastern Europe. The team aims to discover Eastern-European artists and offer them visibility in the West.

KOCMOC – Publishing Space

Melikov & Dettler GbR, Schonensche Straße 5, 10439 Berlin
[District: Pankow | Borough: Pankow]