DREAM IN THE GARDEN Print

My name is Alexandra Manzha, I am a Siberian artist, born in 1987. I have been drawing since childhood, studied at an art school, then at the Novosibirsk State Art College. As an artist, I wonder about the position of the border between childhood and maturity, about the nature of the concept of “adulthood” and “childishness.” Why does being an adult mean losing sensitivity, the ability to perceive something new? How do “uncles” and “aunts” grow out of children who are open, dreaming, and inquisitive? At what point does the radical change occur? Where is this point of no return and where does the “little prince” go? How is it that he squanders interest in other worlds? To maintain this childish perception of the world, I am attuning my inner sensory vision. It helps me to see the intangible, subtle matter. This barely perceptible auratic substance permeates everything in this world, connecting the incompatible. I use the metamodernist technique of oscillating between and beyond multiple disparate horizons. My characters strike a delicate balance between free will and flow, sincerity and irony, integrity and duality, clarity and ambiguity, and natural and magical. They are always looking for the truth, not hoping to find it. I explore the amorphous, intangible aura through the bodily shell. An aura is a certain substance, composition, and property that has yet to be revealed. I find unique ways to have an auratic experience without being repelled by this liquid substance.