After having met with Donald Trump when Tootsie Warhol was working as a civil rights lawyer, Tootsie Warhol dressed and performed as a satirical Donald Trump inside the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and in front of the entrance for two months to highlight the lack of work addressing President Trump in the marquee Whitney Biennial 2019 show.

MAKING THE BIENNIAL GREAT AGAIN! (2019)

(2016)
1.5’ x 2’ x 2’
Argon gas, liquid mercury, glass, wire, play sand, plywood, transformer, silicone caps

Installed at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts
Exhibition Life Soundtrack
Washington, DC, USA

Unit

This photo project gently points at the heart of reconnecting with the truth; that in fact, love is the ultimate healer. Life events can take us through a variety of places. This series offers a hopeful take on what can happen— if we choose to love.

Planting a seed


Nokomis Fragments
Found and altered objects
Dimensions variable
2019-ongoing


Nokomis Fragments

Our personal experiences only allow us to understand a fraction of what the larger world is. In a digital age we share a world of constantly changing images which give us the ability to develop a sophisticated understanding of visual language. My intention is to share my experiences of daily life in Adana, observing the traditions and rituals of coexistence. The traditional material captures memories and craftsmanship.

 

In this work I have brought two contrasting elements together: feminine materials and masculine images. This leads us to question the word ‘yorgan’.

 

A yorgan is a hand-quilted duvet which is often passed down through generations as an heirloom. In families, a yorgan is often imbued with memories and associations.  Children remember grandmothers’ yorgan, and pass them down to their own grandchildren. In Adana, neighbours share everything, including yorgan when guests appear in the winter. A request to borrow a yorgan from a neighbour would not seem strange.

 

In my pieces, I have subverted the yorgan, which is usually associated with providing comfort, protection and security. The quilted images refer to ‘security’, but of a very different kind. Images of war on a quilted yorgan encourage us to consider the price families’ pay in times of conflict; objects that normally comfort and protect us are decorated with images of mechanical warfare that can kill on mass.

 

Who or what do we trust? Where do we hide from our fears? Can we retain our real identity by ‘hiding under the covers’? The beauty of a traditional flower design is transformed into heavy artillery. Can we ever challenge the social order and its structures of power, authority and control?

 

What is the relationship between the home and its daily objects? Is home a place to escape the state? Is the duvet an object of safety or oppression?

The War Heirloom

A wheatpasting campaign that ran late last year in Washington, D.C. Posters urged Black residents to apply for reparations, report gentrification, and use the FUBU hotline +1(833)937-3828 to vent. Posters were hung in rapidly gentrifying historically Black DC neighborhoods. The campaign was done in response to the Washington Post article claiming that DC had the highest intensity gentrification of any US city:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/03/19/study-dc-has-had-highest-intensity-gentrification-any-us-city/?outputType=amp

FUBU Wheatpaste Campaign 

Powering the Cloud explores the connections between new media technology and archaic power, looking at geology, resources of power, materiality of technology and the geopolitical concerns with our future use of technology. I am interested in creating images through the construction and deconstruction of digital photographs, coding and unintentional errors that occur in our technological experiences. The work will consists of digitally rendered sculptural objects made from coal from a local quarry in Scotland, combined with my glitched photographic works. 

Powering the Cloud

An empty apartment implies that no one lives there, but one could wonder about the imaginations and memories lingering in those silent rooms. Through the images, the apartment becomes a representation of the mind, hosting scenes of raw imagination, unbothered by rational thought.
We might consider a fully decorated room; a space loaded with memories and life experiences, to be a life goal.
In this situation, the thought of nothing being there appears most unsettling. While we let these spaces challenge our
imaginations, they propose an undefinable number of options and opportunities. The mere multiplicity of the situation is destined to make one overwhelmed with the potential of that empty space, fearful of a state of heightened entropy. Resulting in a kind of dangerous emptiness, one that feels indefinable, and eventually reveals itself as the opposite. We feel the space between the decisions, an uncertainty which makes it unable to get a hold of a choice that feels right.



Phantoms Among Imaginations

While working on this series of self-portraits I spent a lot of time with myself, contemplating and questioning different aspects of my life, particularly the rules and boundaries I set for myself. Who would I find?

A key part of my process involves inquiry and reflection. With other projects this is a difficult task, and it was even more challenging when considering myself as the subject. Could I truly confront myself, even the darkest parts, and remain unbiased? I decided to approach this challenge with the assumption that all of my rules and boundaries had no merit, poking holes in them from all sides. What would femininity mean to me now? Who would I find?

Growing up in post-Soviet Russia I subscribed to the traditional conventions that a woman must get married in her early 20s, have children before 30, and silently endure abuse her entire life. I was taught it was humiliating to be single for long periods of time. I was taught that older, unmarried women hold a particularly low social status regardless of wealth or occupation. I believed that couples with no children were imperfect and that a woman must keep silent in order to save her family. Today, in my late 30s, I don't fit the traditional Russian mold: I don't have a husband, kids, or a “normal” job with a stable income. Who am I?  
I grew up in a Russian family in which male physical and emotional abuse was normal. The brunt of this abuse came from my father in the form of punishment for disobeying his rules. Nobody talked about it. My family and I kept quiet. I believed that I deserved his abuse. In my teens, I was sexually abused and sexually harassed. I was terrified to walk in my own neighborhood. Like I was taught, I blamed myself for looking older, for being beautiful and sexy. Like I was taught, I locked away the pain somewhere I couldn’t access. I became a true Russian woman. I too endured physical suffering. I too swallowed the pain and remained outwardly untouched and unaffected. 

“Today not only in North America and Europe but in the third world also women are coming forward to protest their oppression as women—to fight against rape, bride-burning, female circumcision, inheritance systems which term them into propertiless dependents, unequal pay, lack of access to work, and sexual violence inside and outside the family.” (“Patriarchy: The Analysis of Women’s Oppression,” Gail Omvedt, 1986)

My portraits express an introspection not only as an individual, but as a collective female consciousness, in which I discovered a lot of pain, sorrow, and guilt that have been suppressed for years.

While self-reflecting for this series, I also found inside myself is a beautiful flower, soft and beautiful. It was vulnerable, it was fragile. I danced with myself in my own world, feeling my own body, my own boundaries, my own sensuality. Becoming truly vulnerable is terrifying. Will I be judged by friends and family, by society, for showing my naked body? I unearthed shame for my own body deep inside myself. But becoming vulnerable was a first step in discovering my own truth and my relationship to it. This series of self-portraits is the result of listening more intently to my feelings, thoughts, and desires. I discovered a more profound love and appreciation for my own skin, comfort and security in being open to others. I believe we are all searching for a sense of balance, the balance between comfortable and uncomfortable, a shaky state of zen.

This self-portrait series is the sum of a deep introspective process that led to the empowerment of me as a woman. I found respect, immersive beauty, and personal power by uncovering myself, petal after petal, feeling, sitting with myself, accepting.



Journey into Thyself

Topography #1

I started out with the experiments with white-out, they formed firm and thick pieces amid almost immaterial swirls of colours. The white-out reminded me of cement, which was crumbling and constantly reconstructed through its mixing with the oil paint. 

It reminded me of cities throughout history, crumbling beneath time or war. Dust from debris floats in the air. But what made these constructs of humanity, and its inhabitants disappear or resist? How can we process information about a war-torn place when even the information-flow is disrupted and manipulated? Where does the myth and reality begin?

The work and information is rendered almost unrecognizable and abstract, but yet retain some breaks where the reality breaks through the aestheticization. 

Eppela - The Missing Piece

portrait

I aim to visually intersect various themes in my artistic practice: natural environments, mental spaces, memory archives, and the human body. Through “Paradise Island” I invite viewers to consider their own unique relationships within these themes.

A particular example of this would be the placement made between the artwork entitled “Ephemeral Tendencies” and the installation “Decisive Traces”. If you look at “Decisive Traces” straight on, the artwork “Ephemeral Tendencies” fits within the centre point on the fabric. I wanted this placement to open up the potential of discovery for viewers, encouraging them to seek relationships between artworks with imagination and movement throughout the exhibition. This parallels the exciting potential in humanity’s drive to discover subjective narratives.

The artworks suggest a space somewhere between psychological and physical, a membrane between the physical world and the imaginative (imagine, if you will, an isolated "Paradise Island"). I hope that the artworks in this exhibition encourage us to reflect on the spaces where memories and extensions of ourselves reside.

Artworks Included:

"Decisive Traces" (installation), "Paradise Island" (bubble figure in dark blue light), "Pandemania" (bubble figure in purple-ish light), "Ephemeral Tendencies" (naked figure with enshrouded head), "Now is the Hour" (two bubble figures). 

Paradise Island 

The Landscape project started in 2018 with the idea to express itself as a reset of the classic academic landscape painting exercise for the representation of a wide and careful composition of natural bodies in various geographic, chromatic and climacteric contexts, where human or artificial structures where, sometimes, also included.
The intention is to remove the term “scenic” and two-dimensional aspects from this artistic expression, updating it to a contemporary context, with four dimensions, leading the viewer to witness this landscape, this “frame” as a real and natural physical space.
Thus, we no longer integrate an individual graphic interpretation, but evolving to a full experience with a tectonic reaction that encompasses multiple perceptions and interpretations.
We are now inside a limitless space for art, and we unconsciously enhance our abilities to perceive space without Cartesian references.
Landscape is an “homage” to nature as new perceptual exercise created through the insertion of a disruptive artificial element. All of the installations are temporary and all materials used for the construction of the pieces are reused from waste of cinema decor industry.
Through this construction, the artist reveals his imaginary, and the viewer his perception.
Form, scale, color - search for configurations without equivalents in the natural environment, to establish a new scenic dimension that provides the observer with a different reading and experience of the landscape, with the main purpose to promote awareness and appreciation of both.
It is a moment of contrast between reality and illusion, organic and geometric, natural and artificial.
The idea is to expand the Landscape project to other territories with a new process of investigation and installation, with the intent to record as maximum landscapes as possible.

Landscape Series

The Masks of the Gods (Die Masken der Götter)

In a globalised world where history, myths and legends find their way across cultures, the mummery and its narrative no longer belongs to a particular national heritage. Narrations change depending on the narrator and a visual world is also redefined and expanded. When the past is reinterpreted in pop culture, it no longer has much to do with its origins, but sets its accents and forms a new fictional narrative. Image worlds are no longer bound by national borders, but become common property, a gigantic open source database that everyone can freely use.The narrator shifts the meaning of the respective details and thus forms new attributions. This phenomenon is not new, but has only expanded through fast and mass communication. In ancient times, people developed new hybrid beings by combining different narratives.The interpretation of the same mythical creatures can vary greatly in different cultural circles and fluctuates between positive and negative attribution.Today, this phenomenon can be discovered in all creative industries, especially in character design for video games, literature, cartoons or the film industry.

In my latest series I try to intensify this process by creating my own myths using  digital image collages, creating new Wolpertinger. I work with photographic archive material from various countries to intensify the mixing of cultures. An interplay of the most diverse meanings, bundled in one figure, which is robbed of its original meaning and repeatedly encoded anew. Like Frankenstein's monster, I assemble each figure piece by piece until a mannequin is created, which I dress and equip like an avatar. In this series, East meets West, old meets modern, reality meets fiction, creating a new narrative.


Die Masken der Götter

Mistake

synthetic velvet is an online, creative magazine which explores the concept of time. Each issue takes the form of a website and is themed around one specific hour. 

The project is made using a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach: a different group of contributors from diverse disciplines and creative backgrounds produce works for each issue. 

synthetic velvet is a digital love letter to time – it focuses on the hour system to tell universal stories, encourage larger conversations, and push the boundaries of digital storytelling.

Since launching, the websites have been exhibited internationally in art & design exhibitions (Vorspiel organized by CTM/Transmediale in Berlin and  the Vancouver Art Book Fair in Canada).

Issue II - 3:10 PM: https://www.syntheticvelvet-threeten.com/
Issue I - 5:40 AM: https://www.syntheticvelvet-fiveforty.com/

The third issue, themed around "the Golden Hour ", is currently in making and will launch in Fall 2020 with a launch party in Berlin!

SYNTHETIC VELVET, A DIGITAL LOVE LETTER TO TIME 

A collaboration between Gintare Simutyte, Joschi Braun and Gabrielle Vitollo.

Fabric, acrylic paint, monitor, JavaScript video, steel wires, decaying leaves.





 Artificially Flavored Leaf 

Watercolor on wasli sheet
Dimension 14x18 inches 

Standing figures 1

45 x 40 x 40 cm Murano Glass 2019
In this Murano glass sculpture I am commenting on the risks 
of immigration. Crossing the open sea in rafts and boats
leads to tragic results. A child’s shoe that may be from a victim 
of a crossing. How in another reality he would simply be
playing with a beach ball, having fun.

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