Interview with Anna Khodorkovskaya

What makes you excited about a topic?

Strangeness of things and facts. Maybe even some perversion. When something exists and is considered to be triviality, but in fact is a very strange incomprehensible phenomena. Some inscrutability of things attracts me.

Do you have any inspiring role model?

Happy people, who love everyone.

What made you want to become an artist?

A desire to be free.

When was the last time that your artistic view has changed?

It changes constantly with new knowledge. Sometimes it changes back as well. It must have been a long process, not just a switch.

Lately you did quiet some online art project. What do you like the most about the internet as an media?

I like it, because I hate it. There are a lot of good things I can say about accessibility and openness of Internet, and they are all true… But the main reason, why I personally started to use it as a media, was that I spent so much time there by myself, that I just couldn’t escape doing something out of it.

How do online platforms influence the way you expose your work?

Usually platforms require to decide what you don’t want to decide: painting or object, performance or media… Or, for example, I have some works where it is difficult to define, if it is a solo or a group project, artistic or curatorial one. It makes you structure things in a given order, which is on one hand difficult and sets the borders, and on other hand helps you to define it for yourself what you are actually doing.

Next important issue is a good documentation of the works. Because when you judge a work by one photo, than this photo should be good.

And of course you need to choose what to show and what not. So I try to choose maybe few pictures, but those which could most fully represent the project.

What are your current fascinations?

Leo Tolstoy’s late writings
Endurance sports

What are you passionate about besides your artistic work?

Running and watermelons

Winning the prestigious Strabag Award 2014, what changed in your artistic career?

A few more people know me, but it didn’t change the way I work

Photo Credit: Manuel Carreon Lopez