‘A soul in search of a home’ is what you first read when you transport yourself onto Simona Sharafudinov’s website. When I first read this, I thought of it as complex and demanding, making me contemplate how the soul knows if it is at home. Is it an instantaneous feeling when it steps through the door, or if you don’t want to imagine it with legs, then will it float through? Will this soul look around and feel an immediate nostalgia, as it is not physical, it makes one think how the soul will know what’s home? However, if I were to carry on, I wouldn’t be able to hear Sharafudinov tell us how her work has this running narrative, so of course questions must be asked and answers must be answered and Simona Sharafudinov pleasntly delivered:
Simona Sharafudinov, Can you walk us through your background — from growing up in Eastern Europe to establishing yourself in London
I am from nomadic ancestors and am nomadic. Born in Lithuania and reborn again in London two decades ago. London is the centre point in the axis of my identity compass.
I was born in Lithuania, just as the Iron Curtain fell. I got to experience the first decade of my life under the remnants of soviet identity and a system which was Utopian to say the least but also extremely authoritarian, corrupt and oppressive.
Being based in London for over two decades influenced your outlook or subject matter?
My life is my work and where I live influences the work I make. London is a vivid palette of culture, sound, taste, colour, smell, experience. It has its own rhythm. All image making I pursue is about rhythm and London aligns and amplifies the rhythm of my pursuits. London is a place where outsiders find their tribe and I would say confidence. It’s also a place, where many people pass but rarely put down roots due to unaffordable and lack of housing options. Because of this it can also be a lonely place.The cultural resonance of London with multifaceted perspectives and merging of migrant, queer, multicultural identities has been an inspiring ground for life research. Swimming in this soup of amazing people, opportunities, parties, culture, it helped me embrace the queer, plug in, find my grit and endure.
How did that journey shape your artistic voice?
I felt from a young age I did not fit into this system, this is where a notion of not belonging started, I read a lot and had a wild imagination, much of literature especially that was coming out of Soviet and post-soviet era was weaved in metaphor so it influenced the way I expressed my inner world, desires and imagination in a place that was oppressive. My parents were not free thinkers in that system, but they were free spirited people, which also shaped my voice and expression of my voice. Whilst the wider system was authoritarian, my local/familiar environment was extremely open and without boundaries. Because of my parents and their social circle I was able to skip school without any repercussions, grow up surrounded by gay men, sex workers, junkies and criminals, the early environment situated me and my voice as the outsider. Arriving in the UK concreted that and although I have been anchored here for over two decades now, I still feel I am floating in that liminal space.
With this idea of floating in that Liminal space, does this transfer into what makes the core themes within your work?
Endurance. Exiled and displaced identity, emotional and psychological landscapes of individuals, the search for home, grief, death, desire – the tension between these.
There is an array of themes that you pursue within your work. How does this transfer, meaning how do you decide which medium to work with when you are thinking of a concept?
My inner states dictate which medium is best suited for giving form to the concepts. All my work stems from my lived and relational experience. Concepts stem from feelings. I am a porous entity that absorbs my environment and translates into a work of art. There are states that influence the medium, for example I pursue painting when I am in states of solitude, aloneness, retreat; heartbroken, photographic and moving image when I am in love; I write and draw in between, daily; I perform when I am charged and alive. Affect is very important to me, how can I touch a place of viscera in you somewhere with the work I make. That state of heart-brokenness is where a lot of stuff pours out from and there many ways I get my heart cracked wide open in this world.
Do you follow a structured plan when beginning a series, or do your ideas evolve organically as you create?
It is organic, mostly, very intuitive, that magical place of feeling-thinking through making. I get an image in my head from a place of feeling in me, and then it’s a question of how to make that image. What medium will it be, what resources will I need? There is structure, but it’s an intuitive structure. Experimentation and curiosity in the outer and inner world are extremely important, as I catch happy accidents, I hold on to and expand from there.
With this line of thinking, I want to go into some of your titles—Voyages of Death, Saints and Sinners, Tender Ruins—suggest layered narratives. How do storytelling and symbolism interplay in your work?
This is a really sharp observation. My work is poetic, it follows the logic of sensation. The titles, pictorial and performative gestures and marks point to the inner symbolic states and the storytelling is figurative, that is to say it is in the lived experience, but abstract. Enigmatic.
What’s a piece that was particularly difficult to make—and why?
Palingenesis, 2019 was difficult. I was extremely raw, porous, angry and heart-broken and I was using that as an output for producing the series. At the time I was renting a corner of the late Phyllida Barlow’s studio, which was in a massive warehouse. It was beautiful but a brutal place in winter due to the cold so it added to the extremity of those feelings. I was using painting, drawing and moving images to examine my soul and my attachments. It was battling with myself through work and through my daily studio rituals. The series would not end, it was like a Japanese knotweed, annoying and painful but inspired and produced many works. It was a form of exorcism.
Your work has this vastness, so is there a recurring visual or conceptual symbol in your art—like a gesture, motif, or colour palette—you find yourself returning to?
The triptych, the house, the body, heads without bodies, bodies without heads, gold, ghostly presence, the kiss, flowers, birds, the kiss. In performances it’s been: stillness, trembling, anticipation – you could say boredom.
As we have an understanding of your work and you have given it to us with a great deal, I must ask, Are there new themes, forms, or collaborations you’d like to explore—perhaps a performance piece or immersive installation?
Yes, I’m experimenting with a theme of death, or affirming life, how quickly it passes and remembrance, with moving image, text in visual form – it’s a collaboration with many but in an anonymous form. I have a vision to present this in an immersive exhibition, venue and funding depending. I am also exploring two collaborations with a leather master and designer – one making a series of sculptural wall-hung pieces inspired by my floating studio and life on the water in London. It’s a convergence of art and craft. And venue permitting an immersive installation and participatory performance called Blank Canvas In the Studio, giving an experiential glimpse of chaos, magic and the mystery that happens in the studio. My collaborator, Rowan from Offland, has redesigned a classic artist smock using painter’s canvas, ready to be painted on and worn, a fusion between art and fashion. Think a wearable art degree show, or a catwalk as an art exhibition.
I have been reading Simona Sharafudinov’s answers repeatedly, as there is something new when a sentence scatters in my brain seeking to find what I truly think of ‘A soul in search of a home’, but this is what I can grasp to help me. Sharafudinov’s art removes structure and rigidness. It follows this flow of emotional state, can I even use the word follows, as it has its own path? There is a level of instinct and intentionality. It is not just to make, and it is not just to present Sharafudinov art artwork, is on this level of world-building, creating this visceral experience through multi-media. I have this new awareness to seek more of Sharafudinov’s, and you should too.
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