Interview with Lidia Moroz

Lidia Moroz is Kyiv based artist. Engaged in art from early age. Received higher art education in Kyiv. Works with two-dimensional and three-dimensional mixed media, and also designs clothes and jewelry. Travels and creates art all around the world. Her works are exhibited both in her homeland in Kyiv, and in Paris, New York, Washington, Chicago, Miami and other cities. We talked to Lidia about her new series of photo collages – CCCPepsi.

Official Website: www.lidiamorozart.com

To forget for a moment that your works are collages, and glance at them as photographs – the images are very surreal. The worlds in them are not obviously compatible! In the sense that it is impossible or quite hard to imagine such pictures in reality, how, using what kind of vision could you “see” this?

Well, considering the amount of media and outside advertisement today, I guess you can see anything. Modern environmental is a collage by itself.

In these artworks so far, my personal experience – late USSR period landscapes, among which I grew up, American movies, Bible stories, art books and later travels abroad… all this comes together in a kind of mosaic.

Practically all the works are sexual in some way. Is this your personal perception of the world?

I wouldn’t call it my perception of the world, but it’s an integral part of life. The 90’s were like puberty for the Pepsi generation. It was the period when all kinds of products were suddenly imported to our country – including erotic media. It was as if they had fallen from the sky onto these gray landscapes.

This topic was exposed to us quite late and served up strangely – either as a taboo, or simply with denial of its existence. As a result, it was breaking out in pieces in a weird, almost aggressive way. So, I decided to balance those two worlds. Also, I felt these set landscapes needed to be shaken up a little.

We understand time and place from the images – it is Soviet or Post-Soviet time. But you add to this, one after another, two extremely different themes: sometimes simple erotic photos from modern magazines, and sometimes iconic artworks from Bible stories or others from antiquity. How do two such different themes come together in one art project?

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve – the first humans who came to this world after their exile from heaven.

The magazines are mostly 90’s Playboys though, which is symbolic for me. There are also contemporary figures, the erotic heroes of the 90’s who become instead the Soviet “heroes of labor”.

In fact, they are all fragile human beings who came to this tough surrounding naked. So far, it’s a connection between the first and the last.

The level of surrealism in your collages reminds me of the cult movie “Sweet Movie” by Dušan Makavejev, though he mixed sexuality with both Communism and Capitalism in that film. What do you think, if you were to live for several years somewhere in Western Europe or North America, how would you see modern developed Capitalism using the perception and analysis that you have used in this project?

Well, thanks, it’s a Gorgeous movie.

In the past few years I’ve spent a lot of time in Western Europe and in America. I think it’s more difficult to work with capitalistic background – it’s too motley. It seems like it already has everything. The Soviet one – in opposite – is very gracious for any kind of visual implantation.

Where are you in these collages?

Literally – I have to disappoint you but nowhere. Figuratively – in every character.

While working on a great project an artist turns themselves partially “inside out”, and “takes out” part of themselves. What did you find in yourself while making this series or when you had finished the work?

I wouldn’t say I was turning something out this time. It was rather like a game or a diagnosis of my past. Completing and displaying my personal visual puzzle to others. It feels also like a kind of healing. As a result, I’ve met many accordant associations and emotions among my peers and older viewers.

Interviewed by Dmitriy Krakovich

All collages (c) Lidia Moroz