Anastasia Tribambuka is a London based multidisciplinary artist, award-winning illustrator and animation director working predominantly in painting, printmaking and large-scale installations. Her practice is mainly concerned with the themes of shifting identity, home and belonging, as well as experience of living in a female body; with a strong participatory element and often involving audience interaction in the creation of the work.
As a British artist with Russian roots, she takes a critical approach to the complexities of her heritage through a contemporary lens of feminist thought and mythological thinking. The striking, figurative visual language in her paintings is an amalgamation of her background in graphic design, the artistic elements found in Russian Avant-garde, French Analytical Cubism and Fauvism, as well influenced by the revolutionary spirit of swinging sixties.
Bio
The artist was formally trained in the traditions of the Russian Analytical school of painting at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design, which opposes the canon of academic education and takes its roots from artists like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pavel Filonov and Natalia Goncharova. She inherited the structural approach to composition and shapes, reversed perspective and bold colour combinations. The influence of Fauvism, Expressionism and sixties counterculture add an element of disorder, emphasising the interplay between chaos and structure that is a key theme in her work. Her background in illustration adds a fresh, contemporary edge, as well as defines the narrative approach and symbolism behind her compositions.
These visual attributes become apparent in her She / Her / Hers (2022) painting series, depicting portraits of women in various contorted, geometrical configurations using a limited palette of bold colours. In her painting series Right to Rage (2022), the artist adopts a similarly iconic compositional style and colourful palette in her portraits of female characters from across various mythological narratives as a powerful emancipatory statement.
Through her most recent solo project, the large-scale immersive exhibition ‘Nowhere to Go but Anywhere’ at the Migration Museum in London (2024), the artist further expands on her foundational interest in exploring the concept of ‘home’, pushing her experimentation with a variety of different mediums including video, sound, audience participation and mixed media installations influenced by the likes of William Kentridge and Robert Rauschenberg. The ambitious exhibition is focused mainly on the artist’s sketchbooks that have been an integral part of her practice, presenting them in a variety of different creative ways in order to foreground the concept of a constantly evolving ‘process’ instead of a finite product.
Alongside prestigious commissions by international brands such as CNN, NBC, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Migration Museum, Tribambuka’s works have been exhibited and collected internationally.
Artist Statement
Having been born in a city and a country that don’t exist anymore (Leningrad and USSR), and having wandered around a bit and growing roots in the new soil now I found myself being concerned with the complexities of identity, belonging and home. At first it was quite innocent exploration of what Home is, but since the pandemic the theme has been turning darker and darker each year, revealing its shadow sides - first, home becoming a confinement, then - falling apart altogether. Themes of losing home, broken homes, damaged roots, displacement and losing ground led me to questioning identity and belonging even more - who am I when my world has fallen apart? Also having been told early one by my tutors that women can't really be artists - sent me on a long path - from denying my gender to questioning, accepting, exploring and celebrating my womanhood. That's another theme I'm currently exploting - experience of living in a female body, especially those aspects of it that are stigmatised, like anger, or ageing.
I like using traditional techniques, oil on canvas, printmaking, charcoal and carbon pencil on paper, but I experiment with digital tools a lot too and even work with moving image. I’m finding it hard to lock myself into one creative field, and each project I take on makes me branch out into new spheres. I’m drawn to collaborative multimedia projects as well, working together with musicians and performers, as well as involving audience. I found that interacting with the audience and asking questions is the most exciting way for me to create work, and their responses stimulate the next steps in my creative process.
All artworks ©Tribambuka 2024