10 Questions with Tribambuka

Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine ISSUE13 | Featured Artist

Tribambuka (aka Anastasia Beltyukova) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist, award-winning illustrator, and animation director working predominantly in painting and printmaking. Her practice is concerned with the themes of shifting identity, home, and belonging. As a British artist with Russian roots, she takes a critical approach to the complexities of her heritage through a contemporary lens of feminist and mythological thinking. Her striking, figurative visual language is an amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Russian Avant-garde, French Analytical Cubism and Fauvism, as well as influenced by the revolutionary spirit of the Swinging Sixties.

The influence of Fauvism, Expressionism, and the '60s counterculture add an element of disorder, emphasizing the interplay between chaos and structure, which is a key theme in her work. In addition, her background in illustration adds a fresh, contemporary edge and defines the narrative approach and symbolism behind her compositions.

www.tribambuka.art | @tribambuka

ARTIST STATEMENT

Being born in a city and country that no longer exists (Leningrad, USSR), Tribambuka has wandered around and found a new home in the UK. It defined her interest in the complexities of identity, belonging, and home. While it initially started as an innocent exploration of what Home is, the pandemic revealed the shadow sides of home when it became confinement. And then, when Russia started a horrific war, it led to the feeling of the idea of home falling apart altogether. It also highlighted gender injustice, when women's bodies have become symbols of conquered lands, leading to unimaginable crimes. As a result, Tribambuka started focusing on themes of gender inequality, female rage, and resilience. She hopes to use her art as a way to process these issues and facilitate discussions about the need for cultural and political change.
Tribambuka uses traditional techniques such as oil, printmaking, charcoal, and pencil but also works with digital tools and moving images.

Right to Rage | Project Statement

Right to Rage, a series of new works, embrace women's anger as a cathartic and emancipatory force. Female anger, in particular, is traditionally embedded into patriarchal social narratives as a destructive and dangerous power that needs to be pacified and sublimated. Tribambuka instead makes us reconsider women's rage as a sign of the violation of boundaries, a reaction to injustice and threat and to things that went wrong in the world, and a "dark" power to be unleashed and reckoned with. 

The narrative and imagery around women's virtues and identities have historically been determined by the dominant perspective of the male gaze and forced into reductive categorical archetypes. Yet women have always sought to challenge this fraught status quo and to create new imagery and definitions around their identity - be it through literature, art, labour, or protest. Female anger is a crucial, progressive force within this historical movement of resistance; and the main focus of Tribambuka's new series of paintings and works on paper.

INTERVIEW

Please, introduce yourself to our readers. Who are you, and what do you do? 

I am Tribambuka (aka Anastasia Beltyukova). I am an artist, an illustrator, an animation director, an art director, and a mentor, but also a woman, a human being, a dancer, a traveller, a public speaker, a melomaniac, a workaholic, a co-owner of an indie record label, former Buddhist and many other things. 
But mainly the artist! And I do art! I produce it, consume it, think about it, and talk about it - most of my time.

When did you decide to become an artist? Is there a specific moment you recall, or was it a path you have always considered? 

I didn't have much choice as my parents were artists and all their friends were too, and that's all I knew as a kid. I think I started drawing earlier than speaking. Then I went to school and got to know that there was another world, less chaotic and more boring, and also very different - it was the Soviet Union, and it was very heavily ideologically influenced by the state. Art seemed like an escape, a magical inner free land. And I knew I was an artist early on. But then in my teenage years, I was told by my tutors that women can't really be artists, or great artists anyway. It is bizarre how USSR was one of the first countries to proclaim equal rights for women but managed to stay (or become) one of the most misogynistic and patriarchal countries now (one of the recent news that feminists organisations are equaled to terrorist ones). So despite the fact that the majority of art students were women - we were often told that we were not good enough to be artists and would never be.
I internalised it, I guess, and became a graphic designer after finishing the St. Petersburg State Academy of Art and Design. Graphic design was also deemed to be a male profession, but in my eyes looked less ambitious. Like, I'm not trying to be a Picasso; I'm just doing some craft. It took me another 15 years, moving to London, and a few years of therapy to question these beliefs and to find the courage to call myself an artist without it threatening my womanhood, and being a woman without it threatening my 'artisthood'. I guess it makes me a re-emerging artist! I'm an early career artist, but I'm coming back to the path that I always knew was mine, and it always was hovering in the background. I always kept my sketchbooks, painted, and did some prints on the side, but only now I'm taking a leap and making it my full-time occupation.
In general, I think it's not something you 'decide'. I see it more as a call, whether you answer it or not. If you don't answer - you're likely to suffer! If you do - you face other challenges, of course, and it's not an easy path, but oh, it's worth it!!

You primarily work with painting. What inspired you to choose this medium? And what do you like about it? 

As an illustrator, I work a lot digitally, and as a contrast, painting gives me so much physical joy - the gesture, the smell of oil, the texture of canvas! The mess, the spontaneity, the randomness of the result. Although I still feel that coming from illustration, I tend to control my painting a bit too much, so as a next step, I would like to bring a bit more chaos and randomness in my works and experiment with techniques that would help me let go of control. It would likely be more mixed media pieces.

In your statement, you quote Russian Avantgarde, French Analytical Cubism and Fauvism, and the Swinging Sixties as your main references. What did you derive from those movements? And how do you incorporate these elements into your work? 

We are the sum of the things that have impressed us the most along the way, I guess! We're shaped by things that made a deep impression on us when we were children. My parents were hippie artists in the Soviet Union, hence the Russian Avantgarde and the French Cubism and Fauvism, as this was their natural habitat, and I was lucky enough to live in the city where you could see Matisse, Picasso, Derain, and Vlaminck in a museum, and I did go there to see them every month!
But also as hippies, my parents were listening to all the British music of the 60s and 70s, which was considered anti-Soviet and harmful, therefore becoming a symbol of freedom and opposition to the system. So this music has a very different weight and value for me than for people who grew up in the West. My first visit to London, which is my home now, was a pilgrimage to the places of The Beatles and David Bowie! And The Yellow Submarine, to this day, remains one of my main visual references - the mood, the colours, the shapes, the vibe! So Heinz Edelmann definitely added a spoonful of magic potion (and Dr. Martin liquid watercolours) to the mix. 
I guess I inherited the structural approach to composition and shapes, reversed perspective, and bold colour combinations from the Russian Avantgarde (artists like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Pavel Filonov, and Natalia Goncharova.) And the influence of Fauvism, Expressionism, and sixties counterculture added an element of disorder, emphasising the interplay between chaos and structure in my works. 

Your work is greatly inspired by your personal experience, especially regarding displacement and roots. How do you process your personal experiences and use them in your work? 

I think art became my way of processing complex feelings. That's my tool to explore it. But also a way to connect to other people's experiences. I found out that I actually like asking people questions and taking inspiration for work from their answers. Asking different people seemingly simple questions - like, 'What is Home?" or 'What are you angry about?" gives so much food for thought! After my last project, "Right to Rage", dedicated to female anger, I've collected almost 400 very insightful notes telling about what's wrong with the world. I had to make a book out of it! So it becomes a shared personal experience.
I did my first project about home in 2019, when I was thinking about what being an immigrant means. I live in London, and almost everyone here comes from somewhere else and has a story. And I wanted to talk about it and hear people's stories. And I did! Apparently, everyone wanted to talk about it. I made a series of prints and two zines, and while I explored the theme for myself - I ended up collecting even more input. One of the results of working on these projects for me is feeling that we all have these shared experiences, that what we feel is not personal, it's universal, and it unites us.

What messages do you ultimately want to convey with your work? 

This is a tricky question; thinking about it, I would say I ask questions and invite for a discussion rather than convey a message. At the moment, I approach all the subjects through the feminist lens, so one of the main themes for me is women reclaiming their space and their stories. But I don't have any definite answers yet, and to be honest, I hope I won't, as I think good art should make the viewer think rather than offer a ready solution.

Let's talk about your series Right to Rage. How did you come up with this concept? And where did you get your inspiration, both stylistically and thematically? 

Initially, it was supposed to be a very different show. I was working on my materials from the art residency in Casa Tagumerche and was peacefully drawing cacti and cats. But then Russia started the war in Ukraine, and the shock of it needed to be processed. So I wouldn't call it 'inspiration', although it is in a way, of course - it was an urgent need to deal with the pain and grief and all the complex emotions that came up in connection with it. I had to find the means to process it all, as it shuttered the order of things, trust in humanity, and my sense of belonging for me. I experienced the most intense rage I didn't know I had in me. But at first, I didn't recognise it; I thought I was depressed or desperate, but then I realised that - as women - that's how we're taught to deal with anger. We channel it into sadness or anxiety. We cry when we are angry. And these are all passive states, while anger is active - something is wrong, the boundaries have been crossed, and something has to be done!
The most triggering point for me was justifying the war with a specific victim-blaming language that is often used towards women when talking about some abuse they have suffered. It was, of course, followed by actual tortures and rapes, like in any war. It seemed to me as a pinnacle of the patriarchal outlook and the ultimate objectification of a woman - seeing her as a symbol of the country that has to be conquered, defeated, and humiliated.
At that point, I was fully aware of my fury, and the only way forward was to explore it. I started reading about female anger, and I have quite an extensive reading list on my website now! I found out that in the patriarchal society, it's the only emotion that is allowed to men and the only emotion that is not allowed to women. As girls, we're discouraged from feeling or expressing it as it isn't 'feminine', while aggression and assertiveness are encouraged in boys and rewarded in men. We've learned to think of it as a destructive and dangerous power, to avoid it, to tone it down, to sublimate, and it builds up, unacknowledged and unaddressed. But in fact, healthy anger is just a sign of a violation of boundaries, a reaction to injustice, and a threat to things that went wrong in the world. To love being obscured.

So I turned to viewing the current events with mythological thinking and exploring the dark side of feminine power.
I found a lot of archetypal references in Greek, Indian, and other mythologies that supported my work. In Western civilisations, women seek images that would define their identity. In the Christian narrative, the representation of the divine feminine is missing (unlike, let's say, in India or Tibet). Virgin Mary, closest to it, only represents the flawless and pure aspects of femininity, not representing a woman's nature as a whole. The images of femininity in Christian culture have been determined in large part by the desires and needs of men, as women's stories in myths and legends were also told by men. Men raised with traditional values tend to want women to be soft, caring, sweet, and nice. Yet women are not necessarily what men imagine or want them to be. So I went on exploring the wild women archetypes that expressed exactly what I felt - Furies, goddesses, and witches - bringing justice and claiming their right to be angry.
Speaking of stylistic references - I guess there's some Russian Avantgarde flavour in these works, and maybe it makes sense it leaked through - lots of red, unconscious reference to the time of the 1917 revolution, maybe?

Your figures and colors have a striking and very recognizable style. Can you tell us more about your choice of colors? Do they have a specific meaning? And what do they represent for you? 

I've noticed I use a lot of red colour recently, and in my printmaking, I use black and red. Combined with the white of paper - it makes it three essential colours that the ancient people used before we learned that essential colours are red, yellow, and blue. White represented life and innocence, black - death and destruction, and red - passion and blood. It is quite an ambivalent colour - combined with the other two, it changed its meaning, being life-affirming when used with white and making everyone look very dangerous and dramatic when combined with black. I love that ambiguity of red. And it took over my paintings too, given the nature of the feeling I've worked with - anger, and also, as I mentioned before - a reference to the revolution, war, and blood, but also passion and dynamism. Erupting volcano, blossoming amaryllis, flaming sunset!
In general, I wanted this series to be very intense - I want people to feel something. And I got the reaction, they were either absolutely thrilled or freaked out! 
When I move to the next topic, my palette might change and become more subtle or more joyful. But I guess a bit of red will always be present!

What are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?

I plan to have a solo show with the Migration Museum in London next year. I keep thinking about the meaning of home and now explore another aspect of it - belonging (and not belonging.) When you leave the place where you were born - and spend some time in another place - you change. Not enough to blend completely with the new place, but enough to feel different in your home country. And you might end up feeling like a stranger in both places. That is even if you left home willingly. When people are forced to leave and lose their homes - this feeling is on a different level. Or people like me, who feel they're cut off from their roots because their country has turned into a monster, there's nowhere to come back to, and your background is something you're ashamed of - feel that their identity is completely shattered. I would like to explore this feeling in my new series and look for ways to find, build, or grow a home and build this sense of belonging wherever you are. That's my plan for the next year, as it is going to be a large multidisciplinary project, involving large-scale mixed media works, installations, performances, and moving images.

And lastly, what does your artist name, Tribambuka, mean? And how did you come up with this name? 

Ah, that's just a silly word combination that stuck with me from childhood! It means Three Bamboos in Russian, and it has no deep meaning behind it - I just love the sound of it!