It is my imagination that steps out into the light, for it alone remains free.

Introduction

We each of us live in two worlds. The external world of other people, other places, and the interior world of the mind, the imagination. Which is more real? The external world that appears concrete and independent, or the internal world of the mind which perceives that exterior through the senses and is perhaps the only thing of which we can be absolutely sure? It is the interplay between those two concepts of reality that the Russian artist Natalia Kondratenko draws on in her work. Now based in Estonia, she explores her experiences of migration, the isolation of the pandemic lockdown, and, more fundamentally, what it means to be unfree. At its heart, her artmaking is performative and intuitive, the camera bearing witness to each unfolding scene in ways that are not wholly controlled by the artist. She embraces serendipity and the subconscious, seeking freedom and connection by letting go – tapping into what she calls her untamed side.

Evolved over millennia, long before the advent of human civilisation, this untamed side lies deep within our psychological wiring. Yet, as Natalia Kondratenko explains, we are born into a society – and a polity – with its norms, traditions, and laws. We are, as she puts it, ‘trained’. She feels this tension in herself. On the one hand, the fear of our untamed aspect and, on the other, the ever-growing distance between human beings and nature. It is a tension that she believes arises from fear of both external nature and the primordial human nature deep within us. She finds the implications of this struggle frightening and asks if it might be possible to choose another path – a path of harmonious coexistence? Coexistence with nature and coexistence with each other. And to find that harmony through a closer relationship with that part of us that remains untamed.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

Why did you become an artist?

I did not come to understand what contemporary art and being an artist meant right away – and I certainly didn’t imagine that I could be part of it myself. No one in my family had any connection to art. After high school, I decided to study ecology, naively believing that I would save the planet from ecological catastrophe. But, in my third year, I was required to undertake an internship in a factory, and that experience completely disillusioned me. I decided not to finish my studies. Instead, I entered a college to study photography.

It was there that our class was taken to the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. That exhibition shocked me – it was the first time I had ever seen contemporary art. I didn’t even fully understand what I had seen, but I wanted to know more about it. A few years later I was fortunate enough to study contemporary art photography with Elena Sukhoveeva and Viktor Khmel. This was the real turning point in my artistic practice – a shift from how to why.

And what was the why?

I realised that my initial intention to be an ecologist remained a lasting influence. I am still deeply concerned about how our relationship with nature is developing. By nature, I mean both the external environment and our own inner landscape. I often feel that the two are in conflict. We create environments wrapped in concrete and asphalt, build structures far removed from what is natural, as if to emphasise that we are different. Yet, what we have built is far from paradise.

The same is true of our inner nature, which we have enthralled to the hyperfunctional in an attempt to become some kind of endlessly productive bio-robot. For me, the key question is whether we can change our way of thinking in order to choose another path, a path of harmonious coexistence.

How did your artistic practice evolve when you moved to live in Estonia?

It so happened that I moved to Estonia just before the Covid pandemic began. I was already isolated because I didn’t speak the language and knew no one other than my husband. Then everything closed down at the outbreak of the virus, leaving me isolated twice over.

Before moving to Estonia, I hadn’t had a clear understanding of what my work was about, it had just been a series of experiments. But now, in isolation, I spent my time in our apartment and walking in the nearby forest. It was here, at the threshold between forest and city, that I started consciously engaging with personal ritual and self-portraiture, exploring the duality of my ‘domesticated’ and untamed sides. And that is how I began my project ‘Borderland’: seeking strength to live through this traumatic moment, to resist.

How did that project develop?

Well, as I say, at its core it’s a personal story of the overlapping experiences of immigration and the pandemic. The narrative unfolds in three parts.

The first focuses on the isolation I felt within the apartment – my personal space which, on the one hand, felt safe and comfortable, yet at the same time engendered the sense of endless repetition. The unbearable weight of a reality in which each day blends into the next. The second part was the search for another side of myself – something wild, but at the same time free. Something I could perhaps find at the threshold between two worlds: the city and the forest.

In the third part, I attempted to bring this untamed side of myself back into the familiar world of the apartment. This could simply result in chaos overtaking the space, but perhaps it could lead to something else… I wanted to leave that open to interpretation. Ultimately, the project also became an artist book in which I drew over the images with a marker pen. I wanted to add another layer to the story – a kind of childlike rebellion, akin to drawing on a schoolbook.

© Natalia Kondratenko – from the series ‘Borderland’ 2023

There is a kind of mythic darkness to this work, almost like a fairytale…

‘Borderland’ certainly reflected my darker, heavier state of mind at that time. A time when the pandemic and isolation – the rupture from my previous life – suddenly overtook my reality. I turned to the forest. In Slavic mythology, the forest is a place of transformation. The fairytale hero must pass through the darkness of the forest, overcoming its obstacles. It is a place of challenges caught between the real world and the Otherworld. It is this sense of ancient myth that I draw on in my personal rituals.

Another important aspect was that I photographed the forest at the edge of the city at a time when urban expansion increasingly consumes such spaces. That is why, in the third part of the work, there is an attempt to carry over fragments of the forest from one world to the other. To somehow preserve the primal aspect of the forest – its wildness under threat of urbanisation – within the metaphor of an inner space.

© Natalia Kondratenko – from the series ‘Metsanaine / Forest Woman’ 2023

Your next series, ‘Metsanaine/Forest Woman’, seems to take these ideas further into the natural world.

Yes. For me, it is a kind of continuation of that exploration of our relationship with nature and, in parallel with this, my personal experience of integrating into another community. This time, I went deeper into fields and forests, and here I began to invent personal rituals. I performed a character who is attempting to return to the wild, but finds that she is no longer adapted to it. Nowadays, when we go into the forest we cover our bodies as protection from parasites, sealing ourselves off from nature. This has become so natural to us that we would not, for example, consider going there naked.

How did you develop your way of working when making these images in which you are both photographer and subject?

When shooting, I used a timer to capture a sequence of frames within the space of a few seconds. It was important for me that I was not the one pressing the shutter and so choosing the exact moment when the camera clicked. In this way, I documented my performances while retaining an element of chance in the work.

Through these invented rituals and performances, I was searching for another, lost part of myself – the part that had once been in harmony with nature. In turn, this echoes my parallel attempts to become part of another culture and community. Yet, beyond these personal considerations, the underlying idea here remains the same: the question of where, ultimately, we are all heading in our relationship with nature.

You remain in the forest in your next series, ‘Root Cause’, this time with the intervention of light rather than the human body.

While this project continues my reflection upon humanity’s relation to nature, the theme here is knowledge and how we obtain it. It seems to me that in our world a rationalist analytical approach dominates – one that too often excludes empathy, especially when we speak about scientific or technological progress. So, in this project, I seek insight not through simple data collection, but through gentle acts of contemplation and reflection.

In the forest, I found growing things that had been damaged – the wounds of the landscape – and illuminated them with coloured light. Again, there are two intersecting ideas here. I used different colours because I wanted to emphasise the individuality of each natural entity, yet it also makes clear the artificiality of that light. What was important for me was the encounter between natural light and the light I have introduced into the landscape.

© Natalia Kondratenko – from the series ‘On the Other Side’ 2024

I am interested in the way in which you use ritual both as a creative process and as a way of coming to terms with personal challenges…

While it is in part about my personal experiences – as an immigrant trying to integrate into a new community and my concern about our disengagement from nature – it is also about the unfolding of current global events. The escalation of military conflict, war, economic crisis, the rise of totalitarianism… This has found its expression in the project ‘On the Other Side’ which, while it may look like still life, is in essence also a form of documented performance.

The work continues my search for a way of finding inner freedom and the possibility of resistance in the contemporary world. As in my other works, I arrived at the idea of an invented personal ritual. In this case, I turned to Surrealism and the practice of drawing on the subconscious. It is an attempt to express everything that longs to be said, but which under current conditions is often impossible. Sometimes speaking out can be dangerous, at other times it feels meaningless to even try to express it in words… and sometimes there are simply no words.

How do you go about creating one of these miniature scenes?

It’s a wholly intuitive approach. I try to switch off my mind, allowing the subconscious to shape the scenes. I might wander around the house for hours, sorting through personal artefacts, my paintings, found objects… or follow an impulse – like collecting my own hair as material for an installation – and then bring everything together within a single frame.

© Natalia Kondratenko – from the series ‘On the Other Side’ 2024

The installations are constructed in complete silence. Immersed in a meditative state, I open myself to the interplay of subconscious and imagination. For me, this has become a space where I can speak freely in times of unfreedom. It is a ritual through which I try to give expression to everything that has accumulated inside. To speak without words about what troubles me in the moment. And what comes to the rescue is the same thing that has liberated humankind for millennia – our imagination. Once again, this is about accessing my untamed side.

On this stage, there are no actors. Here, I try to express everything that in the real world I am not free to do. It is my imagination that steps out into the light, for it alone remains free.

Can you talk about the external realities that lead you to feel this way?

For me, it was the events of 2022. When the war began and repression in Russia intensified against those who spoke out against it… That was when I began to seek other ways to speak more freely. Unfortunately, I see similar tendencies in other parts of the world: rising authoritarianism, ecological crises, the eroding of human rights… global issues.

© Natalia Kondratenko – from the series ‘On the Other Side’ 2024

Are there certain underlying themes or emotions that are shared by these four bodies of work?

I think that there is the idea that we have a dual, intertwined nature. We evolved in the wild but live in a modern global society. In each series, I search for ways of thinking differently, turning to another part of myself. A place within which to process trauma, to find the capacity to express my freedom, my resistance.

It seems to me that global change first requires inner change, which is why my efforts are initially directed toward personal rituals. Yet, I am simply a specific instance of a broader picture of Western culture. So, while these are personal stories, I consider there are aspects of my experience that are also universal.

As for freedom, this I find in my imagination. It is here that I attempt to rediscover my untamed nature – the part in which I find the strength for inner resistance.

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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