Yana Payusova

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Artist's Statement (excerpt) "This body of work deals with issues of cultural identity...When I began addressing these issues in my work, I intended it to become a self-portrait series. In the process, I realized that this was impossible. Soviet regime was structured in a way that all individuality was to be subjugated to the collective, so it became a portrait series of any young woman growing up in Soviet Russia. In the process I decided against working with traditional straight photographic imagery, but rather chose a more interdisciplinary approach. These images are not documentaries in the strictest sense, but rather relational depictions of the latent personal memories of my childhood and adolescence and the events that took place in the history of my country." Bio Yana trained as a painter in an intensive 6 year program at the Leningrad Art LyceÈ in Leningrad, Soviet Union, within the traditions of Russian Realism. She has her BFA from Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL. She has exhibited her work in Mexico, Oregon, Illinois, and Colorado. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has an upcoming exhibition at The International Center of Bethlehem (Bethlehem, Palestine 2004). More of her work can be viewed at http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~payusova/vitae.html