From Russia with Love Painting

Kat Elagina was born in Russia, but is currently based out of Miami. She travels around the globe to get new insights and inspirations from different cultures. As a trained philologist and psychologist, she perceives art as a universal language with which to communicate her ideas and feelings. Elagina receives her inspiration in the traditional mythology of various religions as well as in pop-culture, and works to reveal bridges between them. She picks up motives from our everyday life, mostly from social media and from scenes she observes, and redesigns these motives in order to place them on a symbolic level. Her artwork seems to decipher the reality. Kat Elagina prefers to paint her many different styles with acrylic. Her paintings vary from nearly realistic, naive, or neo-impressionistic. In melting different styles and techniques together she casts her own style, which involves the viewer in a very direct and sincere way. No artistic formalities are important, only the emotions and the idea her artwork inspires. She has developed a unique artistic and metaphorical language in her artwork. It is recognizable in any art style she chooses. Kat Elagina is focused on the divinity of our existence and on the magic inherent in every second of life. She uses archetypal language to emphasize the unconscious of our modern society. Using a wide range of artistic tools she breaks rules and establishes her own ones. The main protagonists of her artwork are human beings (or anything that nearly looks like it). Elagina investigates them, their interactions with each other, and their interactions with their social institutions. Her artwork concentrates on the inside world of an individual. She sometimes includes some ready-made objects into her artwork, in order to build a bridge between her artistic world and the reality. The series Female Universe opens a door for mythology in our everyday life. Anthropomorphic theoriocephalic female creatures are placed in quite mundane situations: having a rest on a sofa, having sex or looking in a mirror. Such hybrids are symbols for the hidden capabilities in combining the features of a human being with those of a beast. Additionally, these hybrids give us a chance to think about our up-to-day knowledge of the genetic profile of the human population.