Original artwork description:

The artwork has a story I want to share with you.

From November 2021 I was planning to move to Portugal from Russia. Finally, I came to Lisbon in March 2022: the moment coincided with the beginning of situation we have in the world.
I have left all my artworks in Russia, as I had to leave Moscow with just one suitcase. Now in my new shelter in Lisbon I have only one painting from my previous works, which was exhibited in Venice in January 2022, and I could receive it here.

The other ones nowadays are stuck in Moscow in the apartment of my university years friend, @nastiotam, who lives in the center of Moscow, Tverskaya street, where all manifestations take place.
That day, when I moved all my works to Nastia’s apartment in the downtown, she met me dressed up in colors of Ukrainian flag: long yellow skirt and blue sweater.

I took a photo from that our meeting. In the photo accidentally Nastia was standing in front of my oil self-portrait, where I raised up the arm, and she did the same gesture. It was like a mirror. That moment inspired me to create a painting with this composition.

Later, before crossing the Russian border, I was forced to delete the photo from my phone. Before cleaning the phone, I sent the photo to Nastia, but in the next few days she was detained on the streets of Moscow, she had blocked her phone, while being transferred in a police van, and then couldn't unblock it.

That photo is unrestorable, that mirror moment now exists only in our memory.
Thus, I’ve decided to restore it in my new painting. I ought to paint this picture in oil for nobody can delete it.

This painting is about life, about freedom, moving ahead with art.
The faces are blurred, they're kind of haze of memories. The shapes of figures are fuzzy, dissolving, like the moment of creation the painting in real life, dissolving between the past and the future.

“Memories of the future”
Oil, canvas, 70x70
2022

Materials used:

oil

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