Medusa Painting

Tribambuka (aka Anastasia Beltyukova) is a London based multidisciplinary artist, award-winning illustrator and animation director working predominantly in painting and printmaking. Her practice is concerned with the themes of shifting identity, home and belonging. As a British artist with Russian roots, she takes a critical approach to the complexities of her heritage through a contemporary lens of feminist thought and mythological thinking. Her striking, figurative visual language is an amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Russian Avant-garde, French Analytical Cubism and Fauvism, as well influenced by the revolutionary spirit of swinging sixties. The artist was formally trained in the traditions of the Russian Analytical school of painting at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design, which opposes the canon of academic education and takes its roots from artists like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pavel Filonov and Natalia Goncharova. She inherited the structural approach to composition and shapes, reversed perspective and bold colour combinations. The influence of Fauvism, Expressionism and sixties counterculture add an element of disorder, emphasizing the interplay between chaos and structure that is a key theme in her work. Her background in illustration adds a fresh, contemporary edge, as well as defines the narrative approach and symbolism behind her compositions. These visual attributes become apparent in her She / Her / Hers (2022) painting series, depicting portraits of women in various contorted, geometrical configurations using a limited palette of bold colours. In her painting series Right to Rage (2022), the artist adopts a similarly iconic compositional style and colourful palette in her portraits of female characters from across various mythological narratives as a powerful emancipatory statement. Alongside prestigious commissions by international brands such as CNN, NBC, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Migration Museum, Tribambuka’s works have been exhibited and collected internationally in both physical and NFT-form.