Recent visitors to the Duke University Museum of Art have likely passed by the main gallery without knowing it even existed. The gallery closed last year to prepare for the collection's move to the new Nasher Museum of Art, but the DUMA's commissioned "Shrouds" project cleverly conceals the mayhem.
The exhibition rotates works by different artists that fit the seven-by-twelve foot windows peering into the main gallery. The current exhibition features works by Anya Belkina, assistant professor of the practice of art, and will hang in the DUMA until Feb. 2.
Aptly titled "Beginnings," it explores that theme in the artist's life, but also anticipates the opening of the new museum. Belkina has taught painting, drawing, design and digital imaging courses at Duke since 2000. Having immigrated to the United States from Russia, her work addresses perceptions of home, identity and communication; as a mother her work deals with growth and sacrifice.
Recess Arts Editor Vicki Kaplan tracked down the artist and professor over winter break to learn more about this year's "Beginnings."
Recess: How do your teaching and your students affect your own work?
Anya Belkina: One reason why I relish teaching beginning drawing courses is that I get to observe the rapid growth of most students' perceptual abilities and rendering skills. And it is my students' growth that inspires me to learn more and pursue new, difficult goals for myself. In fact, that's how I would probably define the difference between an artist and a layman. A layman is someone who has mastered a few tricks and keeps safely cloning the output, while an artist strives to grow, sometimes at the cost of enormous personal risks, self-doubt and alienation.
How would you describe the body of your work and your personal style as an artist?
It is difficult to brand something that is evolving, but there are some themes and formal concerns to which I seem to return time and time again. Like many immigrants, I continue to question such notions as national identity and cosmopolitanism, language dependency and the relative universality of visual communication. Like most parents, I ponder on the tension between sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Like any human being, I seek to find answers to the impossible, immortal questions of mortality. However my interest is presently shifting away from single, logo-like images to something that includes a temporal element.
How much of your art reflects the tradition of Russian nesting matreshka dolls and how much reflects your own personal feelings and experiences?
The first picture in which I employed matreshka forms was painted in 1996, shortly after my daughter's birth. I aspired to convey the feeling of a deepened affinity with the world in general and with one's own family in particular.
Fortunately, the old Victorian house in which I lived at the time was full of whimsical features. The staircase that connected the second floor to the attic was neither straight nor spiral; it had a peculiar bend to it, resulting in oddly shaped stairs. Somewhat simplified, it became the backbone of my painting. On the stairway, in ascending order according to age, my daughter, myself, my mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother are depicted. This motif of birth and regeneration is echoed by the small matreshki figurines in the baby's hands.
Do the dolls represent outward physical growth from child to adult, or inner spiritual growth as one gets older, or something else altogether?
I think that the paintings offer great liberty in their interpretation. I often conceive them as emblematic of a certain concept, but in the process of painting them arrive at alternate meanings. In the current set, I am most fond of the rightmost image, which, to me, seems to summarize the paradox of living-the simultaneous increase and decrease of presence.
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