Aleksandra Kalenova

Alex Kalenova is a Russian queer painter living and working in Saint-Petersburg. Self-taught artist, she was mastering her art skills through private lessons with professional artists and using her teaching experience. In searching for materials for her works, Alex settled on classic oil and canvas, since the goal of her art is to convey its meaning in the most accessible form for most people.
Long before identifying herself as a lesbian, from her earliest steps in art, Alex knew that her main goal as an artist was to depict the beauty of women. Since 2017, Alex, as a volunteer of LGBT community in social media, began collecting real love stories of queer people from Russia, which served as a powerful inspiration for her work. Her art originates in lived experience of the people who shared their stories with her; and explores queer relationships, themes of intimacy, communication, love, identity, and representation.
Since queer art has been banned in Russia, as any public display can fall under the "gay propaganda" law, which is a criminal offense in this country, she continues to create her art, despite the fact that she cannot show or promote it, distributing it very carefully and anonymously only among the community. In her pain...