BP Portrait Award: Winner - Travel Award
In 2003, Ulyana was awarded the BP Portrait Award. Over the past year she has travelled to Ukraine and Russia; creating 14 portraits, several murals, and a large mural at an Orthodox Ukrainian church.
This section of the website is dedicated to her diary and notes about her Travel Award experience. We have also translated the texts of those in the portraits so you can hear their stories, in their own words.
See the Portrait Gallery for the individual portraits and The Mural for the main thematic work.
The official National Portrait Gallery website is at http://www.npg.org.uk/live/bpintro.asp
The concept
"it often feels like the cultural learning gained from change is as shallow as the evening news"
The Travel Award provides an opportunity to reflect on our evolving world. In an era where globalisation is part of our daily life, and the media focusses on only a few issues, it's easy to miss how individual's lives are changing. BP have very strong links with Russia. It is one of the largest companies on Earth and therefore has a formidable social responsibility.
Before I set off on this journey, our media was consumed with Iraq and America - suddenly there was a "new part of the world" which everyone had to acknowledge, understand and encapsulate. It was starting to sound like a very familiar story. There are now many examples of the sweeping social change that Capitalism and globalised-economics have dictated. But it often feels like the cultural learning gained from change is as shallow as the evening news.
It reminds me of how the Ukraine, Russia and the Eastern-bloc countries are represented in the media, how unrealistic these perspectives are, and how globalisation is infecting them.
I wanted to absorb some of the scale of cultural change - "the spirit of generations in change" - in an area radically affected by these trends.
I explored 3 themes of adaptation to cultural change.
I was fortunate to be accepted on course at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts. This academy is renowned as the only one that holds the tradition of rigorous classical training. It has preserved knowledge of the original techniques of classical styles of painting, including murals.
It hasn’t really changed since it was founded in 18th century by Catherine the Great and it was inspiring to work surrounded by such marvelous works created by previous students. I was assigned an assistant who took me through every stage of the process: preparing the materials, transferring the drawing, building layers of colour and finishing.
It is interesting to see Russian's holding on to a Classical tradition that they didn't invent - that they have invested so much in learning the art, that they have earned its ownership. The West seems more ready to "let go" because they create in such a different way.
"It is interesting to see Russian's holding on to a Classical tradition that they didn't invent"
In the orthodox tradition, women were not allowed to paint religious icons or in churches, so it was a great honour that the priest of Church of the Holy Shroud (Pokrovska) chose my work for a mural. His church is an Orthodox Ukrainian church in Podil (an ancient part of Kiev in the Ukraine). Built in 1766 in the Ukrainian-Baroque style by Ivan Grigorovich-Barsky, it serves the same purpose today as it did then.
I chose to follow the traditions of the famous historical icon painters: to fast for 3 days, then go to confession, stand for hours praying, carry out sacred rights, and then fast for the entire period of painting (1 month). For this effort the priest provided written prayers, and blessed me so that I may both consider and carry out the work. Often I would be locked inside the church while carrying out the work until about 9pm or even stay in its 16th century crypt. It was an incredible, spiritual experience.
There was significant cultural conflict within the aesthetic development of the work. In this Baroque church, the priest wanted a 12th Century-iconic feel mixed with its 18th Century origins, and a 19th Century Russian-Italian style such as found in St. Petersburg. To follow strict Canonical rules of detail and somehow marry them together in these different styles was an impossible task.
In the end I chose to use my own traditional style (that does not refer to any particular century): inspiration for faces came from aesthetics rather than realism, hands use classical baroque-style gestures while robes and posture kept to rigid Canonical representations of Saints. Each figure is 2m high, and begin 3m from the ground. The techniques for painting requires rigorous thought so that the perspective and the texture remain consistent when it is viewed from a distance.
"It was an incredible, spiritual experience"
Ukraine was a founding site of the Slavic culture, and St. Petersburg was the cultural capital of Russia. I travelled to local Ukrainian's and Russian's in small villages, to ministers in government, to children and to the aspiring next generation. They have all seen huge changes: all have experienced pain in the ongoing transition.
A young woman whose father was a dissident, is now a journalist and very politically active. She lost her father in the Gulags (the place where all the prisoners were sent). A guy the same age and with a working background went to army and took the strain of an unruly soviet system. Grannies that embraced life after the war. Businessmen who have rebuilt lives, and those who simply cannot adapt to change.
Note that the translations of interviews have been made a literally as possible to keep the individual style of those interviewed. Each individual sat for up to 2 hours talking while they were interviewed and painted.
"Grannies that embraced life after the war. Businessmen who have rebuilt lives, and those who simply cannot adapt to change"