ILMIRA BOLOTYAN

For the project ‘Metrorealism’, the artist captured the subway life in Moscow with her cell phone, using the pictures as a base for her drawings. Picking out extraordinary people and uncommon situations from the continuous flow of faces, the artist tries not to scrutinize the strangers, but keep their personal boundaries. She is not interested in having the banal voyeuristic thrills that happen when people are staring at others in the public transport (or any other crowded place). Quite the opposite, the artist tries to cut through the isolation — so common for the big city residents, ‘I’m picturing not only the people, but myself as well – my foolishness, my insipidity, my craving for individual prominence, my aloofness from others. But at the same time, I accept these people and integrate them. I accept myself and me living in the city in general’.