This week we welcome Viktoriya Basina, who was born in the Soviet Union, and is now based in Brooklyn. Basina received her master’s degree in fine arts in painting and arts in architecture in 2009 from Moscow State Fine Arts Academy. Since then, she has worked as a painter, muralist, and mosaic artist on different commissioned private and public arts projects. Basina also worked as a teaching artist on mural and mosaic projects with socially underrepresented populations. In 2017, she left Russia for political reasons, arriving in Brooklyn and calling it home. Basina maintains a studio arts practice, works as a scenic artist on TV and film projects, and creates public art. She also enjoys working on community-involved art projects and sharing art-making knowledge with a diverse audience. She is a single mother to a 10-year old girl, who is an aspiring veterinarian.
“The underlying concepts found throughout my work are the ideas of compassion, humanity, and humanism. I explore the relationship between the individual and the collective, through confrontations found in society, origin, mythology and metaphysics. Inside human consciousness information or visual imagery can trigger a chain of involuntary memories and associations. I have an interest in gathering these assorted thoughts, symbols, recollections and encompassing them into one focal image.”
“In recent work, I have incorporated inlaid mosaics, glass, vitreous enamel, and gold leaf into my painting, creating mixed media work, alluding to fragmentation of space, imagery moved beyond painting, and a use of materials not traditionally shown together.”
“I began working on the Folk Toys Series in 2015 and finished it in 2022. The series has around 20 pieces of female and domestic animal figures. The series seems whimsical and humorous but explores deep social issues of intolerance, misogyny and violence. For many years I have been creating work combining Eastern European folk imagery, symbols of violence and glamour in response to militarization and acceptance of violence that I witnessed.”
See more of Basina’s work on her website and Instagram page.
