Discover the creative force behind the official poster of MuseumWeek 2023: Polina Kuznetsova
Introducing Polina Kuznetsova, the talented artist behind MuseumWeek 2023's official affiche. Get to know her and her incredible work firsthand.
Polina Kuznetsova is a contemporary artist born in Kharkiv (Eastern Ukraine) and one of her captivating pieces called “Field of Dream” has been chosen as the official poster for MuseumWeek 2023, perfectly embodying this year's theme of "Nature and Culture."
While the image had to be cropped for the poster, we are delighted to showcase the breathtaking original version in this article. "Field of Dream" is one of the key paintings of the "Dreams" project, created in 2020. Polina depicted an idyllic space, where the character can relax or stay forever, having lost access to reality. There is no time and space but only dreams.
Polina is a graduate of the esteemed Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Art, where she honed her artistic skills. Her works have graced numerous international exhibitions in the United States, European Union, and Great Britain. Notably, the landscape holds a central place in her artistic practice, as exemplified by the poetic celebration of Ukrainian nature in her renowned series, "Magic Landscapes."
To gain further insights into Polina Kuznetsova's artistic vision and creative process, we present an exclusive text written by the artist herself on the occasion of our exhibition ‘Reconciliation with the living’, offering a profound exploration of her inspirations and the meaning behind her captivating artworks.
Polina by Polina
For years, I’ve been creating my "Magic landscapes" series. This series of paintings is not an attempt to depict the forests or fields as they are. What I try to do is to bring onto my canvas a sense of a forest, a feeling of a field, a palpitation of a heavy mist, of a damp soil, and of a meadow that's like the warm back of some furry animal.
For years I’ve been fascinated by the inter - lacing of the leafless branches of late autumn or early spring when leaves have fallen off or have not yet popped out of the buds. I see these netted twigs as an infinite, interconnected web that hides some veiled mystery, and I want to come inside, right into this spellbound meshwork. I create each enchanted landscape as if creating a mandala. Painting them is more of a medi- tation for me than anything else.
There was a time in my life when I was going through a rough patch and everybody was calling me, asking me "How are you?" and "Are you doing all right?" to which my response was: "I am now OK, I'm painting
the grass". This grass became the first painting in this series, although at the time I didn't know it would actually become a series, but it felt like I had finally found some- thing that is really important to me. The year was 2012.
I was quite young then, and it was a period of an intense search for my creative self. Sometimes I wanted to take on topics that had a social focus or do something conceptual. But now, when I create my enchanted landscapes, I think that if people were to listen more to the feeling one gets standing on a hilltop looking down at the fur-coated grasslands, or a bewitching sense of mag- ic one feels entering an enchanted forest - sensations well-known to people of different cultures and social classes - then there will certainly be less evil on this Earth.
Once, this November, I came to my favorite forest. The woodlands were moist and the forest was purple. The soil was rusty- red, crimsoned by the fallen leaves that had started to decompose. I looked at all this beauty and thought: "This is so sublime, that I wouldn't be sad to die and blend into this magical world." I paint my landscapes as patterns, as abstractions. I am not inter - ested in exact physical likeness
Polina on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/polin.ua/