Reader Print - Limited Edition of 10

Artist and photographer aia.upon/Alina Utrobina was born in the town Mozhga in the Udmurt Republic, Russia in 1997. In 2015, after entering the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, Alina studied at the Book Illustration and Graphic Art Department for 6 years, where she mastered all the basic techniques of creating graphic works such as etching, lithography, linocut, etching on plastic, cardboard, monotype and silkscreen. At the same time she continued her photography practice, gradually developing skills and becoming a more and more prominent figure on the art photography scene known as aia.upon due to her Instagram nickname. It was, according to the artist, during the 2019 pandemic quarantine which she spent at home in Udmurtia, when she first truly experienced the joy that came from her shots and found the style that most properly reflected her as an artist. Over the past few years, Alina has been developing in both directions in parallel: she participated in exhibitions and auctions of contemporary art with her graphic works and received orders for commercial shoots from brands and media, as well as from private clients. Photography at some point came to the fore, while her own artistic style and imagery were becoming increasingly independent, unique and distinctive. Regardless of whether it is fashion, portrait, subject or landscape photography, there is a sense of mystery, intense ambiguity transmitted through visual methods everywhere. The noir fairy tale captured by aia.upon doesn't try to convey clear and unambiguous messages to the viewer. The images created in her works rather exist independently, obeying the laws of unique aesthetics, which is obviously built into the system of the artist's perception of the world. In the autumn of 2022, when the artist moves to Israel, in connection with which the space of her creative activity inevitably changes, her works gradually begin to be filled with something that has never happened to be captured by the artist before. In the new series of works, a new reality that fascinates Alina is captured, transmitting her attentive gaze that recognizes a new, unfamiliar aesthetic of the land, where she found herself living. These changes certainly influenced the photographer’s artistic language, keeping the mode of a mysterious fairytale, but bringing absolutely new intonations and shades into it.