Irina Tall: Ghastly Sirins
Interview conducted by Zest Curator, Carmela Vienna with Artist, Irina Tall.
"A dark gloomy sky, a shadow has already descended on the whole world, and you are like an owl, you keep hearing and sighing ... You do not look at your reflection, but it doubles in many windows, it is like a ghost white and not material, what can only be designated contour of a pencil sketch .... Graphite quietly slides scratching and your movements in the darkness, you keep walking and thinking that someone has died ... Or is still alive ... Life is like a shadow during the day and alive at night ... Alive until stupefy and pulp ... "
Artist William Shoal, creator of the Round Lemon X SHOUT ‘Personal Symbolism and Queer Art’ Shout Out video, was the artist you were inspired by for this exhibition. Your work seems synonymous with William’s in regard to the fact you both create your own personal mythologies. Are these mythologies based on your personal memories? Can you tell me more about what these memories are and how they shape your work?
Everything that I experience, I try to put into my work. Then I draw the most powerful works.
Very often I am disappointed, but these disappointments are replaced by other feelings. In 2019, I had a lot of disappointments - particularly in me drawing the figures themselves, after which I slightly changed my technique and started doing ink fills. It seemed to me that my disappointment allowed reflection about my work. In fact, feelings are a good source for creativity. In 2021, I made two works under the single title "Two Hearts". I conceived them back in the middle of 2020, whilst drawing them, I was then torn apart by a lot of mixed feelings. I even thought about not finishing the piece…
When I think like this, I try to imagine my feelings in the form of some kind of creature. In the form of a bird, a lion, a dog, and then I "put" a mask on this torso, a human mask, sometimes the mask collapses and sprouts through it. Small sprouts which are thin and frail, but then they dry up and become like hair.
Sirins, according to Russian legends, are mythological birds who have the head and chest of a human, and body and wings of a bird. How did you become so fascinated with these mythological creatures?
My passion for Sirins is connected with the desire to fly, and the dream of gaining wings. Man walks the earth from birth... And birds can fly...
The image of the Sirin came to me during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but then I thought of depicting scarlet burning birds flying over mountain barren ridges. Later, my thoughts and feelings changed, and I began to create white Sirins, calm and peaceful. Initially, it was some kind of dream, I just imagined a huge scarlet, hot bird and scarlet mountains, and also a scarlet unicorn. And the fight of the unicorn and Sirin. I imagined a small pool and a straight high rock, the place where the battle took place. And one of them either won or lost.
I then thought that I was drawing a fantasy that suddenly came to me at night, but the project grew and became a kind of ghost of myself ... I painted based my memories of Moscow, about the situation that I once experienced, this is a personal story that I turned into a myth.
According to folklore, Sirins were considered dangerous creatures and Men who heard them would ‘forget everything on earth, follow her, and ultimately die’. It was only during the 17-18th Century that this representation changed towards beautiful creatures which encompassed peace, strength, and eternal joy. What do Sirins symbolise to you?
The Sirin is a symbol of eternity for me. This ghostly bird is a messenger, its singing is like an expectation of news. I generally like the expectation of mystery, the expectation of something that will happen or not happen. I believe that in this expectation lies the expectation of a fairy tale, something that comes from mythology. This is similar to a fragment of a performance from Aristophanes' Lysistrata.
I am constantly painting Sirins, birds from Russian mythology. For me, they are like half-humans, half-birds, it's like a dream. Poets and many creators describe that they would like to have wings and fly, the Belarusian poet Maxim Bagdanovich has a poem "My soul is like a wild hawk."
Birds overcome vast spaces flying over different countries, they are a symbol of freedom and the destruction of borders, and the human face-mask is different personalities. A person cannot imagine themselves without a face. It’s very difficult - even when we imagine ourselves as some form of animal, our face always remains.
For me, the scarlet Sirin is a kind of pandemic symbol, white with a bright face - freedom. These are my personal symbols, or rather my personal mythology.
Through your Sirin pieces, I definitely picked up on the visual reference of the ‘The Swan Princess’ by Mikhail Vrubel. What else inspires you when making art?
As a child, I really liked Mikhail Vrubel, I even copied him several times when I studied at an art school.
‘The Swan Princess’ (1900) by Mikhail Vrubel
I love walking in the woods and sketching. I always carry a small watercolour sketchbook, a few pencils and a sharpener in my backpack. Lately, I've been drawing with wax crayons. They have an interesting specificity, their colors almost do not mix and they are very bright. For me, this feels experimental.
Sometimes I am inspired by the cries of seagulls in the morning, I like to see their silhouettes in the blue sky. The birds then become dark blue, almost black, like the night sky. Sometimes I get inspired by movies, or just an unexpected sound, like nothing else. Where I live at night, there’s a very strong wind - it accelerates and flies in a rush against the trees, swaying them. It also howls amazingly - I once even recorded this sound.
You often Intertwine both visual and literary material. In what ways do both your art and text feed into each other?
I think that my visual material should have some explanation - something that can explain who these creatures are and where they come from. And then I compose some fairy tales, which I call "Unparables". Why do I call them that? This is a very difficult question for me - the traditional literary genre of Parables. I consider this name itself to be evidence of the past, but in order to write down the present, something else is needed - and so I thought that the word itself should contain some kind of prefix, and so I called my literary experiments "Unparables". A parable is evidence of the past, and a non-parable of the present. And since I am a critic by education, it is easier for me to write a description, to make a literary sketch, this to some extent helps me express my feelings and thoughts. I had good teachers at the institute, who gave me a lot as a person, including teaching me professionalism "in expressing" my thoughts.
Your work has a ghostly feeling too it - as the figures are usually sketched out loosely, completely drained of colour with dramatic ink washes invading the background. Why do you choose to work in monochrome a lot of the time?
Perhaps the monochrome just reflects my thoughts. I draw very quickly within 30-40 minutes. From nature, it's five to seven minutes.
I somehow strangely began to print monotypes, although before that I did not like them. And it started with the fact that I just printed some kind of ink drawing, and I liked the stain. After that, I thought that it was the printing effect that I needed, and since I don’t have a printing machine, this technique is the best choice. I worked out the details with a thin rod, without any preparatory drawings. I draw from my head.
The effect of negligence and mysticism is obtained purely by chance. I don’t plan it on purpose, although this may also be due to my interest in antiquities, angels, and some other creatures. I really like Bosch, and probably at some inner level he inspires my work.
In some of your other works, you use the queer material of mascara in combination with traditional materials like gel pen and paper. Is this choice based purely made on the materiality of the mascara, or does it signify a deeper meaning in your work?
I use materials purely by chance. For example, Chinese mascara was always lying around, but it was a long time before I began to use it as a material - just like my watercolor sketchpads were unused for several years before I started making ink fills. I just like the external effect of the mascara, its surprise which comes out at the end. Sometimes I use eyeliner as a highlighter, it's more intense and when it dries, it doesn't smudge. Black, red and white are my favorite color combinations.
I have been doing black and white graphics for a long time, but I came to ink fills by accident. I wanted to portray a real girl who had an unusual expression, very bulging eyes and a half-opened mouth in a smile, I then thought that she looked like a mask, and not a real living and filled with feelings. I Later I came from a black silhouette to a white one, it was then that I created "Istria of a mouse" from small sketches of the life of a small fluffy animal.
What can we expect to see from you in 2022?
The projects I’ve envisioned have already came to fruition. I do not plan my future far enough to foresee anything definite. But in December 2021, I joined the International Union of Postal Artists. In February, my works were resized into postcard form and were exhibited in Germany, Argentina, Italy and other countries.
