She was born in Moscow in 1969 and is a component of the celebrated artistic binomial Liudmila & Nelson, which has successfully exhibited their photographic-based works in Cuba, america, Canada, Colombia and Ecuador. For a while now, she decided to experiment “at her own risk” in a set of thematic essays that explore her essential being as a lady, mother and lively element within the complex network we call nature.
Hers is an intimate, quiet, introspective work: sensitive. Here she shows us that other fringe of her work. That is the way it is told, she tells us:
I started to feel fascination for this art from my early childhood. It was love at first sight. I remember well my parents’ cameras, with which they took my first photographs, stored of their leather cases. From a really young age, I sensed that taking photos was something transcendental, almost an irreverent motion, an quick that may remain secure from the inevitable passage of time and oblivion. I loved family albums, people, places, objects and landscapes from other times. Then, once I was a youngster, they bought me my first camera. I felt fulfilled. I dreamed that I can be an awesome photographer and reporter for National Geographic or another prestigious magazine, documenting necessary events or political and social conflicts; perhaps I might do street and nature photography in some distant place, amongst wild animals. I had the partitions of my room covered with photos cut out of magazines, so I could expand the bounds of my very own life and travel through the photographs.
Years later I used to be linked to the Fayad Jamís gallery in Alamar. There I made my first personal exhibition, Silencios, in 1995, a yr after the exodus of the rafters, with the collaboration of he who was my partner in life and in art. A really hard, critical, unforgettable time. Photos of paper boats in all places, indoors and outdoors, and likewise by myself body, exposed as installations, as in the event that they were underwater. I shared the gallery space with one other photographer and friend, Chilean Gonzalo Vidal, whose images documented such dramatic events. They were two views on the identical issue of emigration. That small and fragile paper object that represented the emigration of the rafters, in turn meant the lack of innocence and illusion.
My very own personal story is that of an immigrant who got here to live to tell the tale this island, coincidentally, on a ship. A paradox. I used to be born to a Russian mother and a Cuban father in the previous Soviet Union. I got here to live in Cuba definitively on the age of seven, after many comings and goings, on a protracted journey, after my parents finished their studies in Moscow. That long journey deeply marked my life and my work as an artist. Only sky and water, an infinite horizon and sometimes some dolphins. The primary time I saw land again was impressive, the night we arrived within the Bay of Havana, after weeks of sailing. Seeing the boardwalk for the primary time, from the ocean, was an unforgettable spectacle. I still remember the deafening sound of the ship’s siren announcing its entry into this city where I even have lived and worked ever since. For me it was being the discoverer of a new world.
In that first exhibition I discovered a approach to interweave a collective event with my very own experience, a relationship that I even have maintained in most of my work. Since I used to be a toddler, I even have known uprooting, family separation, the pain of claiming goodbye to family members, adapting to a new culture, language, customs. Reflection of the history of this country, stories of emigration and painful separation.
Since Silencios, and for a few years, I even have worked with one other artist, Nelson Ramírez de Arellano (Berlin, 1969). We have now developed an intensive photographic and installation work, resembling Proyecto 384, the Absolut Revolution and Hotel Habana series, amongst many others, which reflect, with an ironic, conceptual and provocative look, on social, political and cultural issues. I feel enormous pride and gratitude for every thing we do together.
At the identical time, I even have been working individually, more intimately and symbolically, searching through the image and the creative process itself elements of my existence, motherhood, my relationship with the geographical and social space, loneliness and the deep feeling of nostalgia that I at all times carry with me. Creating solo has been somewhat difficult and difficult, resulting from the solidity and importance of the work carried out as a duo, recognized inside and outdoors the country. Our work together is maintained despite the separation. Many pieces could also be in process.
The influences received are many. I’m pondering of latest Cuban artists, resembling Ana Mendieta, Marta María Pérez Bravo, René Peña, José Manuel Fors, amongst others; perhaps in the usage of a frontal, centered composition, in the way in which of constructing the photographs, formally and conceptually. Many other artists who’ve made use of this medium to precise themselves come to mind. I believe of the surrealists, or conceptual art. I’m a fan of Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies, and surely his art has influenced me ultimately as well. I believe the influences come from art generally, from cinema, from literature. Not only the visual references, but in addition the books we read and the music we take heed to, develop a sensitivity that’s later expressed. I’m self-taught. I might have loved to review photography, to raised master the technical elements, that are so necessary, but it surely didn’t occur due to things in life. It was my compulsion and my have to create and make art that led me down this path.
The fervour for taking photos is certainly one of the things that motivates and stimulates me essentially the most in life. I believe it’s one of the crucial incredible inventions of mankind. I attempt to be as authentic as possible on this creative and introspective process. I at all times seek to precise myself from my essence.
One in every of the series that I enjoy essentially the most is Fantasmagoría. In natural environments, in elements resembling tree trunks, grass, flowers, puddles, I seek to integrate my very own shadow with the natural background, to acquire a picture by which my ghostly silhouette blends with the environment, its same colours, textures and shapes. I’m only a passing presence. The creation process itself takes me to an inner dimension, which I then attempt to see reflected within the aesthetic result, with a powerful and powerful visuality. I connect with my very own transient nature in a world that’s each everlasting and consistently changing. We’re a part of every thing, of sunshine and shadow, of what changes and stays, the ephemeral and the everlasting.
Mi autorretrato y yo is a series by which, through a mannequin that I discovered abandoned on the road, I construct images by placing objects on it, working on lighting, composition, looking for to convey a psychological state with a powerful symbolic and emotional charge. Within the technique of constructing each photo, I attempt to represent myself based on my subjectivity in a contemplative and conscious way, observing the creative act, looking for to attach and discover myself with others through common emotions and meanings.
Becoming a mother totally modified my life. My daughter became the middle of my universe and my inseparable companion. I even have recorded every moment of her life from when she was born until today. The arrival of digital photography allowed me to make 1000’s of records of her growth and transformation, which I find fascinating and delightful, of great sentimental value for each of us.
Adolescencia is a series of photos of that necessary and delicate stage of life, of changes and self-discovery, which coincided with the pandemic, confinement and the few moments that we’d exit. Indoor and outdoor photos, poetic moments of sunshine and shadow, which I attempted to capture in essentially the most spontaneous way possible, in order to not detract from their freshness and naturalness. When taking the photos, I assumed of the butterflies after they emerge from the chrysalis into the sunshine, of the fireflies, with their powerful inner glow, of the need to spread their wings and fly.
Being within the natural environment allows me to get away for some time from the issues of on a regular basis life that hit us all so hard. I like trees, their imposing presence, absolutely the fantastic thing about their forms. Within the midst of the cruel situation we’re experiencing, of deep crisis in any respect levels, in an increasingly vitiated and hostile reality, taking refuge within the contemplation of nature, admiring its infinite and complicated magnificence, gives me peace, inspiration, balance, silence, strength and a sense of freedom, connecting with my center and from there with every thing else. I’m attentive, knowing that anywhere something beautiful and unique, interesting or suggestive, apparently insignificant and on a regular basis can appear to rescue from oblivion, resembling a cloud, a flower, some old shoes, a puddle, an empty bench or a cat; to be photographed and shared with others.
Alex Fleites
