Paulina Siniatkina is one of those artists who, at the beginning of the military invasion of Russia in Ukraine, very quickly decided to emigrate. At a time when many were still trying to understand what had happened and were trying to work out a further strategy of existence, Paulina was already working as a volunteer at an Amsterdam railway station, helping refugees. Simultaneously, Paulina creates a touching graphic series, Homes, dedicated to destroyed houses in Ukraine. The war uniquely divided the life and art of Paulina into before and after: painting works remained in Moscow, now other genres seem to be in demand. Speaking of her experience as a volunteer, in January 2023, Paulina conducted a series of performances at train stations in the Netherlands, and currently the artist, as part of the Master's program ArtEZ University of Arts, is in residence in Belfast and is working on a new idea, namely whether people need walls to live in peace and what can be countered with enmity and the language of violence. Danila Bulatov talked with Paulina about the artist's life in emigration, work with refugees, studies abroad, and plans. 

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Danila Bulatov: Paulina, I would like us to talk about how you see yourself as an artist in the changed conditions, what changes in your artistic practice, in your approach to art, to people, and the world in general. Let's start with your departure from Moscow, when and how did you leave?

 

Paulina Siniatkina: on March 7, 2022, I flew to Yerevan. It seems to me that it was one of the last Aeroflot flights to this destination. Then, flights to Yerevan started again, but back then nobody could foresee what would happen. It was a really exciting first wave of emigration. Honestly, I wasn't very aware of where I was flying. The most important thing for me was that dogs could be brought on board. I have a little dog, which thank God usually fits in hand luggage.

 

DB: Dog is important. What else did you take with you? 

 

PS: well, my suitcase, which, of course, is not the largest, but it was what it was. It was March, and I took with me only warm spring clothes. It seemed impossible to me what was happening and somehow I thought I would be back after two weeks. In addition, our performance in the center of Voznesensk should have been held shortly thereafter. March 24 is the day of the fight against tuberculosis and for me, it is always an important date, a day when I do something about this topic, the fight against the stigmatization of this disease. On this occasion, we had the first set of performances in The fist row.

 

DB: Please, tell me more about this performance.

Your social commitment as an artist is very important to me.

 

PS: Performance title, The first row, refers not only to the world of theater but also to the medical one: this is what the first line of drugs for the treatment of classical tuberculosis is called. This performance was born on the initiative of Anya Nekrasova, an actress from St. Petersburg, with whom, as it later turned out, we were almost simultaneously sick with tuberculosis, in 2015, only she was in St. Petersburg and I in Moscow. Having met, we decided to do something related to our experience and created a performance together with the playwright Yuri Klavdiev, the director Lena Smorodinova, the composer Kirill Shirokov and the set designer Vasilina Kharlamova. We prepared this show as part of the Peredelkino residence.

 

DB: and because of your departure, the performance did not take place? 

 

PS: No, no! The performance took place and was even repeated several times. The consequence of the war was to have created a version of this performance in projection: we recorded a video with me, with my voice, they were vocal improvisations. But, of course, I was sorry not to be there in person, because during rehearsals I felt incredible magic on stage. Unlike Anya, I am not a professional actress, but we are both survivors of an illness, we are united by this experience and the whole comedy is a documentary, it is a kind of storage of our memories that Yura has created in our dialogue.

 

DB: Let's get back to your flight to Yerevan. Why did you fly to Armenia? Were you planning to stay there for a while or was it just a convenient transit point? 

 

PS: When the war started, I was completely paralyzed. I wanted to somehow stop all this, sell paintings and send the money to Ukraine, go screaming in the street... I ran to take a selfie against the background of the mosaic of the "eternal friendship of peoples" at the metro station in Kievskaya. It was very scary. I also have a guy who is from Amsterdam and of course, there was a fear that we would not be able to see each other, that they would close the borders. There was a feeling that the world was going down and we decided that I should leave temporarily to have at least one escape. The ticket more fore I was going into the unknown, and I was shocked, of course, by the plane full of young guys in their 20s, who were also flying to nowhere like me. Half of the aircraft were Armenians, and the other half were young Russian dissidents. I was very supported by friends who gave me and my dog a place to sleep, so Yerevan it's a place where I could breathe again. I stayed there for 10 days and then flew to the Netherlands. I had a tourist visa, but I already knew that I had entered a master's degree.

 

DB: So you applied to graduate school in 2021? 

Master's at ArtEZ University of the Arts, in Arnhem?

 

PS: Yes. I applied in 2021, and the answer that I entered came to me two weeks before the start of the war. I was looking at several study programs in the Netherlands and I accidentally came across the program of this university that responds to what I am doing: it is a one-year International Master Artist Educator unique in its way, dedicated to social change through art. The Artist Educator is an artist who works with people and has a kind of educational component in his projects. For example, the performance at the station had this social aspect, the involvement of the audience. People could learn through my project how they experience war from different angles.

 

DB: Tell me more about this performance, how was it created?

 

PS: I was a volunteer at Amsterdam Central Station for six months and at some point I started writing an online diary on my Telegram channel to somehow manage stress. There I recorded the monologues of people fleeing the war and also reflected on how it feels to be a Russian woman helping Ukrainians. I was the kind of sponge that absorbed everything, not least because I speak the language of people fleeing war. Of course, refugees arrive in a country where they do not understand and do not know anything, and very few of them speak English, so we as volunteers have always been the bridges between the Dutch and Ukrainians.

 

DB: Yes, I saw the performance documentation when you read 

your diary at the station, but what was the social aspect here? 

 

PS: It was a kind of intervention. I went to a specific track at a specific time to find the train to Bruxelles. l I knew what time it would arrive and how many people usually got on it, and so I guessed the time of this performance in such a way that they got off the train, people passed through me and became actors in one way or another. I performed in all three of these performances at different train stations, but only in Amsterdam did I have a specially invited audience. Including the guys with whom we volunteered together, the green vests, and also for them, it was a very important moment, because they lived the experience with me. On the other hand, I probably tried to find healing in this way. We are all deeply traumatized, and if this trauma doesn't start to resolve now, I think it will lead us to a post-conflict that will be even harder to resolve. So I want to start working on this as soon as possible and get other people involved.

 

DB: But did the idea of doing these actions arise much later, when you already stopped volunteering?

 

PS: Yes, when I was a volunteer, I didn't have any thoughts about projects, I just wasn't able. Initially, I wrote all these stories just for myself: I was very hurt and needed to take everything somewhere. Also, I thought it would be useful if other Russians also read this and saw what was happening, I wanted to make it visible.

 

DB: I would like to dwell on the post-conflict that you started talking about. It seems obvious to me that it will not only concern you and your volunteer colleagues, who, in my opinion, came from Russia…

 

PS: Yes, there was a whole group of Russians. Especially in the first days of the war, the volunteers were Russians.

 

DB: So, after the war, the conflict will not be with them. It will instead be with those who now adhere to the position, those of the it's not all so unambiguous, not to mention those who now actively support the war. It seems to me that this conflict is completely inevitable. Will a dialogue be possible, what do you think?

 

PS: it is very difficult for me to say something here, it is extremely painful when there is a division of this order between people, especially if within the same family. This also struck me: there are relatives with whom I can not communicate because I understand that if we enter the discussion, we will almost certainly break off the relationship. So silence for me now is a way to maintain connection, which I certainly don't consider a good method. 

 

DB: Seems like an obvious way to save yourself... 

Can art serve as a medium of dialogue? 

 

PS: Definitely. Art is the most accessible language designed not to break but, on the contrary, to build connections. I hope that if people see what I am doing, they will start asking some questions and maybe dialogue will be possible later.

 

DB: What are your plans? Now you are finishing your Master's Degree, you come back to Amsterdam and you think you are an artist already in the Dutch context?

 

PS: Yes, now I have a student visa, after which there is an opportunity to apply for a special annual visa, which, let's say, allows you to stay in the country. So far there are no long-term plans. Learn to live the here and now. Maybe then I can apply for an Artist Visa, they give one here too.

 

DB: But do you not consider returning to Russia for yourself, even if only temporarily, to see your parents, or does it scare you, also because of the threat of persecution?

 

PS: You know, with this emigration, I realized how much I miss home. But even before I was a potential ex-pat, because my boyfriend is Dutch, and everyone knew that sooner or later I would leave, but that it would happen just like this, that I could not go back, this turned out to be the most painful thing for me. I seem to dream every day about my apartment in Moscow and the village where I grew up... of course, returning to Russia now carries risks. Because of my protest activity, they also published me here in a Dutch newspaper... my face appeared on the front page of Het Parool with the following caption: "These Russians now live in Amsterdam" and then the quote ”I have a deep sense of guilt". My friends and I joke that recently I was the face of tuberculosis in Russia, and now I am the face of Russia's guilt.

 

DB: Do you still paint pictures now?

 

PS: Now I am no longer focused on the medium, it guides me mainly on the motive, and I found that through the language of performance, it is easier for me to convey my thoughts, and painting personally for me here and now does not work, although I miss it very much. In general, most of my works remained in Moscow in a studio, I also miss them.. 

 

DB: I also have a feeling that now painting is less in demand, it seems too “salon " means for the current moment. Although I probably, say this now that I just saw the photos of the Art Russia Fair, it is difficult to imagine anything less appropriate today. And what do you think of the perspective of painting?

 

PS: It seems to me that painting can always be relevant and in demand. It's great when an artist can find a pictorial language that matches the moment. It's just that this is my period of this kind, and I worry that this will happen because, after all, I've been a painter for so many years that I can't just take it and discard it. Probably, first of all, now I do not have enough time and I do not have the study. Although I continue to deal with pre-war subjects: I made the series of graphic works Hospitality in Amsterdam, I left a painting with the image of a quartz lamp, I had started painting it in Moscow…

 

DB: But you can't finish it since you're in Belfast. Tell me a little about your ceramic work, please. 

 

PS: From ceramics, I made supports for test tubes and with these, I germinated plants: this is a rethinking of medical objects through their "domestication". I still plan to make an aroma lamp from an inhaler. I am interested in the subjects that surrounded me in the hospital, part of the hospital routine, because, firstly, I lived in the hospital for 7 months and the hospital became a home for me, and what matters to me is the intersection of hospital and home, secondly, I strive to destigmatize the medical world: the idea is to make of these generally frightening objects for people something that can blend harmoniously into their home.

 

DB: Precisely concerning the role of medical issues in your life and your creativity, I wanted to ask you about the activities of the organization TBpeople, which brought together people fighting tuberculosis, of which you are a co-founder. Do you continue to participate in her activities, and follow her? It seems to me that one of the negative side effects of the war is that the military agenda seems to have pushed the activities of educational or charitable organizations to the second or even third plan.

 

PS: This is a very important part of my life. We organized this NGO in 2016 in Bratislava, we had a Russian-speaking community of representatives from different countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. TBpeople is a global network of tuberculosis survivors, and now branches are opening in completely different parts of the planet. And one of the big networks we have is in Ukraine, so when the war started, my attention was focused on the people who are being treated there and for whom then it is much more difficult to leave the country. 

 

DB: People with TB need constant monitoring and medication, so they can't leave with the other refugees? 

 

PS: Of course. If a person is sick, he must complete the intended treatment, depending on the type of tuberculosis and the degree of resistance to antibiotics. Treatment lasts at least six months, the maximum for life, depending on how much the body is affected. I, for example, have been under treatment for 10 months. Patients with extensive resistance are usually treated for two years. And it is very important not to interrupt this treatment, because in such a case, acquired resistance to antibiotics may occur, which can lead to irreversible processes.

 

DB: What about Russia? Is there in general a TBpeople project? In Russia, the activities of NGOs have in general been very complicated in recent years, and now there has been a large outflow from the country of exactly those people who have done many such projects, it seems to me. What is your perception?

 

PS: I understand that the problem remains and it is important for me to continue working on it, but now I have left Russia. Although in fact, my activism on this plan stopped in 2019. The cause was COVID, which closed hospitals to visits. Before that, we traveled to hospitals all over Russia, visited the sick, distributed our brochures, and communicated with doctors; we did the project with the support of WHO. It was difficult to organize a national branch in Russia because we understood that here such an NGO would immediately receive the status of a foreign agent. Therefore, we acted autonomously, with independent consultant status.

 

DB: Got it. Let's get back to your creative plans, what are your projects besides going back to painting?

 

PS: Now I'm in Belfast for my study program, and somehow our project has to be location-specific. This city is a good ground for social projects since it only illustrates the post-conflict situation. In particular, the entire city is divided by walls enclosing Catholic communities from Protestant ones. Moreover, these walls are higher than the Berlin Wall, some literally with a ten-story houses. The post-conflict is directly embedded in the structure of the city and everyone feels it. There were many paramilitary organizations on both sides doing terrible things to each other. In 1998, the so-called Good Friday Agreement was signed here, an agreement designed to end 30 years of violent conflict. But people are very traumatized on both sides of the walls, the past conflict seems to be stuck in the air. Until now, the gates of these Walls of the world close somewhere at 6, sometimes at 21, and you literally can not pass from one street to another.

 

DB: The wall as the simplest solution to the problem ... what do you think about opening this post-conflict?

 

PS: Our study represents a sort of intersection between anthropology and social work, with art, with research activity. So I like this program, it offers some new methods for working with people. In the month we were in Belfast, we had to determine where our field of interest was and what we wanted to bring as artists into this situation. We cannot resolve the existing conflict, but we can try to make some small changes that will potentially have long-term consequences. I will research both sides of the wall: I wonder how you can compare and reconcile two narratives so rigid and fundamentally opposed yet highlight the same problem, only from different angles. And, of course, I can not help but think in this context of the mirror narratives of Russian and conventionally Western propaganda. I am interested in my role as a mediator, a person who does not belong to this conflict, but who knows something about the current conflict from the history of his country, and can somehow use this knowledge in this context. I'm thinking of a performance that would go between the walls. There are places like this when you exit the Protestant area, walk 10 meters and enter the Catholic area. I am very interested in these 10 meters between the walls, they are like picks. And I'm interested in the fact that I left the conflict, but it seemed to me that I was in a post-conflict future, and here I can reflect on this future if I can somehow influence it. Now I am thinking a lot about what our future is and where this point is, where the conflict ends because it is obvious that when people stop killing each other, it does not mean that the conflict is exhausted.

 

DB: That's for sure. It seems to me that it will be very nice if you manage to combine and correlate your Russian optics with the Northern Irish one. Here, too, as I understand it, not only political confrontation plays an important role, but also issues of identity and colonial heritage in general. Speaking of classic Russian propaganda narratives, have you faced discrimination simply for your citizenship?

 

PS: there were several situations, quite funny, but nothing critical. At the station there was practically nothing like that, on the contrary, all Ukrainians always asked me where I came from, and they were always as grateful as possible. It seems to me that there was only one girl who changed her expression when I said that I was from Russia, but she did not say anything, I just felt her tension. Once a Dutchman made fun of me in a not-very-appropriate way, but I immediately received the support of my comrades. There was also another kind of support: I received a grant that was intended specifically for Ukrainians or Russian dissidents. In addition, this grant came from the Literature Foundation. I have been very supported by this kind of institutional help, it is fantastic.

 

DB: But don't you have the feeling that you have lost your audience, that you have moved away from a context important to you?

 

PS: Of course I do. But so it is: there is no more home, nor the familiar rhythm of Moscow…  

 

DB: Do you follow what the artists left in Moscow do, in general, the Russian art scene?

 

PS: I can't say I see myself in this context. It is very clear to me where my place is now, in the sense that there is a war, and everything went according to other plans, it became more important for me in one way or another to talk about conflicts, talk about war.

 

DB: It seems to me that many Russian contemporary artists share your feelings, and since in Russia it is impossible or dangerous to talk about it now, we see an unprecedented wave of emigration. But at the same time, a significant part of the artistic community as a whole seems to ignore the situation. Is it a defense mechanism, an unwillingness to let negative emotions in?

 

PS: I think you can't blame anyone for anything. If only because not everyone can and not everyone wants to leave and this decision must be respected as much as possible. But yes, there is a feeling that many put some kind of protective lock. This is such a familiar feeling to me even with tuberculosis, in my experience of activism. It's the same situation where you're trying to talk about something you've experienced and you realize that people don't even want to get involved. Because it's like it's not about them, and you're trying to find a language to explain that it's not just about me, that it's about us all. I was lucky to be there, but anyone can be in my place. I see this indifference everywhere and I am obsessed with it…

Even going back to the performance at the train station, it was important for me to notice this thing about the language barrier. It seems to me that it was about the sensitivity of communication and the fact that the power of emotions can even overcome the language barrier when you are in a train station and read something in another language. I was interested in what reaction the people passing by would have. Of course, most of those who passed by thought "Oh, this does not concern me", but someone went a little slower or showed some interest and read the description of the performance.

 

DB: I understand you very well. We hope to find the strength in ourselves both for greater empathy and to overcome that post-conflict situation that we talked a lot about today.