Video art has long captivated Alena Zavarzina, especially because of how much it’s evolved to cross the boundaries of mediums and how deeply it can reach: “I am acutely aware of the constraints imposed by traditional artforms and battles with the stagnation of thought. Video art, having simmered for decades in the interdisciplinary crucible of the arts, has emerged as a confluence of entropic artistic forms, merging traditional and experimental techniques and technologies in sound, light, dance, and digital media. Its phenomenon and undeniable value lie in its absolute freedom and functionality.”

Origins

A seminal figure in this field is Nam June Paik, an American artist of Korean descent. Originally from Seoul, he began his education at the University of Tokyo in 1953, where he studied art and music history. Later, he moved to Germany and continued his studies at the University of Munich. In the late 1950s, Paik worked at the electronic music studio in Cologne, where he met John Cage. Deeply impressed by Cage’s aesthetics, Paik incorporated these ideas into his own artistic vision.

Andy Warhol also utilised a Sony camera, but in a markedly different manner to Paik. Instead of creating video works, Warhol simply placed the camera at the entrance of his famous “Factory”—an art studio frequented by New York’s writers, artists, and musicians. This gesture anticipated the modern culture of constant documentation, now ubiquitous on social media. Warhol’s provocative video performances featuring socialites and superstars foreshadowed the reality shows of recent decades. Among his notable experimental films are “Sleep”, “My Hustler” and “Mario Banana”—each a distinctive experiment with the single-frame format.

Conceptual artist Bruce Nauman used video art to create interactive spaces and explore the expressive possibilities of his body, reflecting on the complex nature of the artist. The primary theme in the work of artist Martha Rosler was the role of women in society, a significant issue in the 1960s and 1970s that remains relevant today. Her video work “Semiotics of the Kitchen” drew on the legacy of Julia Child, the television host who became synonymous with the ideal American housewife, a notion that sparked critique and satire among feminists. In the 1980s, Rosler turned her focus to issues of mass culture, exposing the imposition of truths and untruths and revealing the superficiality of fashion magazines.

The Emergence of Video Art in Eastern Europe

In contrast to Europe and America, video art in Russia began to develop much later due to a lack of technical resources. However, once these resources became available, artists eagerly embraced the medium. The starting point for Russian video art can be traced to 1989, when director Juris Lesnik, artists Timur Novikov, and Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe launched the project “Pirate Television” in Leningrad. The episodes of “Pirate Television” were a blend of home video antics and meticulously planned performances. The central figure in most plots was Vlad Monroe, with appearances by Georgy Guryanov, Sergey Bugaev-Africa and Artemy Troitsky. Shortly afterwards, the AES+F group emerged in Moscow, comprising members from various fields: conceptual architecture, fashion photography, and graphic design. Their early projects were mainly photographic and installation-based, but by the late 1990s, they began creating high-tech collages filled with references to art history and mass culture. Since then, their works have been successfully exported to Western museum collections, exhibitions and festivals.

Cultural Assimilation

It is evident that the principle of collaboration has accompanied video art throughout its history, with the combination of various art forms and technologies flourishing on its fertile ground, free from constraints, standards, and limitations. Video art, in my opinion, allows artists to realise their ultimate dream—to animate their work and let it transcend the confines of two-dimensional or three-dimensional space, altering the direction of their creativity. For artists today, it is crucial not only to be multidimensional but interdisciplinary. Unexpectedly, an exemplary figure of such interdisciplinarity and cultural superposition in contemporary art is Alena Zavarzina, a video artist and digital content creator now based in London, who has authored groundbreaking projects even by today’s standards. This is the same Alena Zavarzina, known to many as an Olympic medallist and world champion snowboarder, a star of the Russian team at the Olympics-2014.

Alena’s biography itself seems like a daring artistic performance. Consider this: in September 2018, the top-tier snowboarder announced her retirement from sports and, around the same time, began collaborating with VGIK student Anastasia Vorotnikova on her own video art project, SLALÅM. This project would become a symbolic act of transformation and a transition into a new reality and life.

From Olympus to Albion

SLALÅM is a transformational work in every sense, depicting in real-time the process of making a fateful decision through the allegory of a dream. According to Alena’s and Anastasia’s original plan, the artistic project initially narrated a straightforward journey of a hero to the Olympic podium. However, as her life circumstances changed, so did the concept. At some point, Alena Zavarzina realised that the story would not be about sport, success and Olympic rankings—the artistic form seemed to take on a life of its own, evolving independently and generating its own meanings. Thus, instead of a success story, there emerged a video canvas about acceptance and overcoming failure, and a metaphorical hero’s journey through trials. Back in 2018–2019, this deviated from the mainstream; discussing failures and the survivor’s fallacy was not in vogue. Consequently, her video project emerged at the dawn of a nascent trend towards extreme candour and powerfully integrated into it.

Following SLALÅM, Alena permanently left Russia and the sports world, studying graphic design and graduating successfully from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. As she began to assert herself as an artist, Zavarzina intuitively absorbed the cultural foundations and values of the video art genre, freely releasing any creative ideas without realising that in many ways she was ahead of her time. This is the same time that was crucial to her sporting achievements and, as she was unfairly criticised in her past life, prevented her from reaching the podium in her final Olympics.

Tabula Rasa

The case of Zavarzina, to be fair, can be called exceptional: while the intersection of art and sports isn’t entirely new, there are few precedents of an athlete of such high calibre irrevocably leaving sports to become an equally successful artist. Alena didn’t just enter video art—she plunged into it from the Olympic slopes, ahead of her time, identifying key landmarks in contemporary art and rapidly realising her creative potential through both personal projects and powerful collaborations, acknowledged by industry connoisseurs.

Alena Zavarzina began her artistic collaborations with renowned artists within the context of exhibitions. By using the work of other artists as a visual foundation, she created collage installations and mappings on the exhibition walls, thereby integrating viewers into the artworks themselves and enhancing their perception. For instance, in 2020, one of her first creative partnerships emerged with artists Olga Avstreich and Zhenya Milyukos in their bold and timely project “Video Chat: Send Nudes”. “The English language, with its considered generosity, distinguishes between the nude and the naked,” wrote art historian Kenneth Clark in his seminal work “The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form.” Alena, Olga, and Zhenya’s project brilliantly illustrated this assertion, receiving exclusively positive reviews from art critics.

In the spring of 2024, Serene Gallery in Lugano hosted Olga Avstreich’s second solo exhibition in Switzerland. The works, part of the series “Odd Winds” and the eponymous exhibition, explore transitional states and the drama of the female experience. For the project, the artist once again enlisted Alena Zavarzina to create video art. Alena utilised collage-mapping techniques, projecting fragments of paintings onto empty spaces to enhance the visual effect and immerse the viewer deeper into the intended meanings. According to gallery director Alexander Blanar’s statement, the exhibition was a resounding success, garnering significant interest from the local community as well as nearby Milan.

This speaks volumes about Zavarzina’s ability as an artist to engage in dialogue with her audience through her art. Notably, Zavarzina’s use of self-referencing—the allegory of her own creative journey, starting from a blank slate—has become one of the main tools of her self-expression.

Beyond the Fourth Wall

 One of the most compelling qualities of video art—one often elusive for many art forms—is its immersive nature. The ability to blur the line between the viewer’s dimension and the spectacle naturally attracted directors, granting video art a ticket to the theatrical stage. The theatrical debut of Alena Zavarzina, born and raised in Novosibirsk, fittingly took place in 2023 at the “Red Torch”, one of Siberia leading theatres.

Her video installations for the landmark production of “Dead Souls” enabled the director and stage designer to replace and expand the scenery, heightening the action’s immersiveness. In the altered stage space, the pervasive theme of the journey unfolded, capturing the “gigantic breath” of the Russian land and the small individual caught at the crossroads of these immense scales. The play received standing ovations from both audiences and critics, and in 2024, Alena Zavarzina was awarded the Diploma of the Best Set Design at the theatre competition for her work on “Dead Souls”.

Her collaboration with the theatre world didn’t just continue but reached an international level. She began working with an independent Israeli theatre, for which she creates video art installations for productions and is currently developing set designs for the new theatre season.

Vox Populi

An artist is created by their art, but a great artist is distinguished by their courage to express their ideas through art. Today, artists are increasingly stepping outside museum walls, and street art has become one of the most relevant forms of self-expression, seamlessly integrating into the urban environment. While traditional painting finds its place in exhibition halls, street art comes to life in the very socio-cultural fabric of cities.

Alena Zavarzina’s video art can be found here as well. Like a true street artist, she makes her statements and protests by integrating them into the urban landscape through mapping on London’s architecture.

In 2022, Alena launched her project Nesoglasnost, an artistic publication that boldly commented on the socio-political realities of our time. Nesoglasnost also serves as an open reflection on the crisis of national identity that Alena acutely experienced while away from her homeland. Later, she decided to extend this project and give it a new form on the streets of London. She selects intriguing buildings in London and creates mappings based on the Nesoglasnost series.

This unique format of street video art is a vivid and impactful form of manifesto as contemporary art. In the street, which has become a space for communication and a field of anonymous statements, an independent artist consciously renounces any claims to the inviolability of their art, making it truly public property.

Over the past five years, Alena Zavarzina has successfully established herself as a digital and video artist in prominent projects across the UK and the USA. She collaborates with leading cultural institutions in Russia and Europe, with her installations and works gracing renowned galleries and exhibitions of other notable artists. She communicates boldly, and sometimes even with extreme candour, through her work, unafraid of missing the mainstream or facing critics’ disapproval.

In one of her interviews, Alena said, “I believe true art is born when it emerges from within you, and you cannot hold it back. The need to express oneself through artistic form ceases to be a choice at that moment—it becomes a creative inevitability because you are so overwhelmed by certain emotions or pain that they break through your physical shell and create something unique. I think a worthwhile piece of art is often born at such an emotional breaking point, revealing the most authentic aspects”.