Lenny B

Lenny B. (Elena Volkova) is a figurative expressionist artist and political refugee currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Defining herself as a "former Russian," Lenny’s work is a radical act of identity reconstruction. After escaping a life shaped by systemic dysfunction and the shadow of the KGB in Moscow, she has dedicated her practice to the visceral deconstruction of the "Russian cultural code."

Her journey from a high-profile career in commercial photography to the physical intensity of oil painting marks a transition from silence to testimony. Lenny’s art is not merely an aesthetic choice but a survival strategy and a clinical documentation of internal catastrophe. Her work has been recognized for its raw, uncompromising honesty, navigating the complex intersections of trauma, exile, and the pursuit of humanistic values.


​Artist Statement

My art is an exercise in excision. I use oil paint as a physical substance to scrape away the layers of a forced identity, searching for what remains in the void.
Working primarily with heavy impasto and palette knives, I treat the canvas as a site of psychological excavation. Each stroke is a rejection of the "muta brutality" I witnessed growing up in a society built on system...

2007 - Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography