Lisa Zakharova

tekenen , schilderen , performance , Lichaam , Figuratief , Educatie , Ecologie , Community

In my works, I investigate the intersection between folklore and ecologies - memories of species, imaginations of chimeras, mutability of histories. Crafting stories that dissolve the distinction between human and non-human, between nature and culture.

I am a multimedia artist. Painting is my primary medium to exercise world-building, there I collect impressions and imaginations, play with perspectives and reflect. Theatre essay pieces are my testing ground, where I get to invite people into my world-view and raise questions of care, response-ability and connectivity. To build up those conversations, I engage in woodwork, ceramics, paper-mache and making puppets.

I see the world as a multitude of actors who have as much influence on us as we have on them. Thus, hyper sensitivity and attuning to the environment is my tool of resistance to indifference and fear.

**Chimera** - 140x120, oil on canvas A chimera is an organism composed of cells of different genotypes. Human and non-human here mutable and interchangeable. Boundary of identity blurred and ready to become the other.

**Transitional envinroments** - In ‘Annihilation’ by Jeff Vandermeer, a biologist studies a transitional environment, which is an environment where both marine and terrestrial processes are present. A mix of saltwater and fresh mater is the main characteristic. But the book takes the idea of transitional environment further, somewhere where landscape disturbances (catastrophes) form new relationship between living things, push them to new ways of co-existence. This series is reflecting on ways of being in such environment, adapting to its scale or time. Seeping through the waves, dissolving in a pond - and all the other ways i feel of being one with the world.

**World patterns** - 2025, 150x100cm, oil on canvas, cotton thread This work is inspired by the myths of the northern peoples of Russia concerning the structure of the world. On Selkup tambourines, the levels of the world are often depicted as circles supporting one another. In this painting, the circles literally support one another, stitched together with threads. The painting is an amulet, and when viewed through it, any surroundings become part of a magical world order.

**Do-Gooder** - 2025, 100х100х40, papier mache, textile This wearable mask brings to life inner monsters and fears. Do-Gooder is an entity who wants to do everything at the same time, grabbing at tasks with his fourteen hands. He is most afraid of failing to do everything at once. The project was realized for a performance at W139 as a part of Mette Sterre’s mini-residency.

**Outgrown#1** - 2025, 120x100cm, oil on canvas In some fairytales Baba Yaga is described as filling her house fully, with her nose sticking out the window, or a foot out of the door. Anthropologists attribute those descriptions to the house being symbolic of a coffin, thus fitting her exactly or almost so. In this painting I reinvent this image for myself, a house reminiscent of my dacha, and a girl bigger than it is - a reflection on growing out of your childhood home but perhaps still clinging to it.

**Outgrown#2** - 2025, 120x100cm, oil on canvas A continuation of the series. The girl is trying to fit into the counters of the house, mimic its shape with her body, contain herself inside. The house is a border between inner and outer worlds, and it is disappearing, only a simulacrum idea of it left.

**Outgrown series exhibited at Vrij Paleis Amsterdam**

**Outgrown exhibited at Brienenoord island**

**Let the dream go, where the night lays** - 2024, 150x100cm, oil on canvas The name of this painting is a Russian proverb that acts like a spell. People say it three times to banish a nightmare. This painting was inspired by studies of hell and heaven in Eastern European and Eastern pagan traditions. Here, I assemble those symbols into an image of me trapped between death and dreaming, fear and fantasy. An advice to myself how to behave in the face of loss and terror.

**Matters of spirit - spirits of mater** - Group exhibition at KunstpodiumT. All matter finds itself in a state: solid, liquid, gaseous. People live in states too: stressed, calm, energized, crying, asleep. The concept of this exhibition brings those together, by tracing networks of connectivity between the physical and conceptual, the body and spirit; to take upon a bolder exploration of who we are, what we are, and erasing the border between those two. The experience of having a body can be both a grounded one and an alienating one. Are you it? Do you own it? What layers of your body constitute your actual self? Are fantasies, dreams, folklore, and songs a part of it? Are the inner molecular brewings and reactions part of our identities? Elements that our cells are assembled from have been here since the dawn of time. Do they remember it? Is it our memory too?

**Behing the seas, behind the mountains** - 2024, 100x50cm, oil on canvas Reflection on home and identity. Perhaps, the woman is a dream of the village, or the village is a dream of the woman. Their interaction is an embodiment of my desire to belong. To become a hill, like a Scandinavian legendary giant, and stay for eternity because a hill doesn’t run away.

**Dissolve** - 2026, 41x31cm, oil on paper

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