10 Questions with Daria Koshkina

Daria Koshkina has a BA in Illustration from the University of Hertfordshire and a Master of Digital Media and 3D Animation from Northeastern University. Her works were showcased at Lucerne Comics Fest, Lift-Off Animation sessions, and the New Alliance Gallery. She is currently a Data Visualization Research Specialist at Barabasi Lab, where she contributes to projects shown at the Ludwig Museum, MEET Digital Culture Center, and Postmasters Gallery. Her art and illustrations were published by Vice, UN Women and Science.

dariakoshkina.com | @daria_draw_things

ARTIST STATEMENT

Daria is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working at the intersection of data and figurative digital art. Her work focuses on change, the pursuit of well-being, and the immigration experience of women—how individual identities are shaped by power structures, oppression, displacement, and growth. Through animation, digital painting, and data art, she explores how the reality of facts overlaps the subjective yet very real space of a personal experience.

INTERVIEW

Could you introduce yourself and share what drew you to become a multidisciplinary artist and designer?

Visual art has always been my way of interacting with reality and making sense of it, especially during complicated periods in my life. Additionally, I've always been curious about experimenting with different tools at hand. For me, multidisciplinarity is rooted in a childhood curiosity about mixing and matching elements, seeing how the mix changes, and discovering the surprising results they can create.
I suppose my versatility is also connected to my exposure to various fields. I studied at an animation college for a couple of years but dropped out. Later, after I'd gone in another direction and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in illustration, the job market was tough, so I took part in several internships and learned design. Design and illustration are skills that work very naturally together. However, at some point, I felt less attracted to the idea of selling products, which is the norm with design and illustration. I actually wanted to explore how the world functions further, which is what led to my interest in science. Via my work and Master's degree studies, I was able to immerse myself in a more explorative environment. Thanks to this experience, I learned a lot of other methods and became especially interested in the stories that data tell. 
I believe that the medium should not constrain the research question. An outcome can take any form — code, art, design, animation, or even a book report. This flexibility is essential for me because it gives me a versatile range of "languages" to explore and answer my questions effectively.

How has your background in illustration and digital media shaped your approach to creating art?

At its heart, illustration is about telling a story beyond words. It is about creating characters from actions and circumstances that are all encapsulated in a single moment. Like animation, drawing has a specific plasticity — it broadens our opportunities to bend reality. Illustration has taught me a lot about working with time and metaphor. 
I started creating digital paintings during my bachelor's studies because digital media gives me a sense of shape and interaction with the painting that is distinctly different from a canvas. It gives me a sense of control. Digital media also has the capacity to transform how we give value to artwork and change the role of an artist in the creative process. I think the opportunity to change, edit, and erase parts of your artwork creates a new sense of time for the artists who work in digital formats.
For me, digital media represents a shift in our reality, partially due to its increased capacity for multiplying or replicating information. Whilst having access to all this data might seem great, I think a lot of people actually have trouble finding the precise piece of information they need; algorithms are frequently too suggestive. Moreover, design often serves to grab our attention rather than guide us to the information that we truly seek: a specific detail, a longed-for friend, or something more meaningful than just digital presence, for example. This digital loneliness is one of the themes I capture in the paintings shared with Al-Tiba9 as a part of the contemporary experience. This phenomenon, set against the backdrop of life challenges and global changes, is something that feels universally shared but is also personal. When I started this series, I was, in a way, affected by the armed conflicts in the world. I was also an immigrant with no home whose family members passed away within a year. Digital media paintings gave me a sense of control in the world where I lacked it. I want to use my digital unit of information to reflect on this second of loneliness lost in time. 
I like to create brushes that are based on the collection of textures I have previously photographed. Currently, I am drawing with my collection of brushes based on the nature of Hawaii and Texas, also the pavements of Boston, where I live. Digital media has taught me that I can multiply the things I love to create something new.
I find it important to reflect on the limitations and boundaries of digital media. Digital is limited to what can be computed. Not all math can be computed. It limits the language of digital data art. Does this limitation deprive us of better ways to show the story behind the data? And does the design and construction of digital spaces deprive us of human connection? I am worried that technologies sometimes feel predetermined — as if they can't be any other way. But many technologies can.

You work across mediums like animation, digital painting and data art. What excites you most about combining these disciplines?

Switching between mediums gives me the freedom to examine the subject from different angles. 
For example, for my Bestselling Books project, I mixed data art with some digital painting techniques, aiming to create an experience that allows the audience to wander through a project as they would a compelling book.
Interactivity and animation provide an opportunity to show a metamorphosis. Change is an important feature for humans to track because somebody's successful transformation may give us information about how we can adapt to the world's challenges. 
However, for the projects where I want to show the state of things, such as my current project about immigrant women, I might depict a moment in time with a medium like painting. I think static mediums are helpful in terms of integrating emotions. With any project, I am excited to see how the idea grows and what form it takes, and I let it guide me.

Your work focuses on themes like change, well-being, and the immigration experience of women. What inspired you to explore these topics?

I am an immigrant woman myself, and I know a lot of immigrant women in different parts of the world. I am able to trace how the act of immigration changes me and the people around me. I feel that it is important to capture and reflect on this experience.
There are approximately 281 million migrants around the globe, and 117 million of them are displaced. To compare, this is more than the population of Brazil or Mexico. There are great numbers of immigrants, yet each situation is special. Each person has a unique story about their immigration and how it affects their life. 
It takes a lot to move to a completely new country and build a new life there. I should note that my particular immigration experience was positively transformative because, despite many challenges, I had some privileges, such as being able to pursue education. I know it is not the same for all women, and many of us face adverse situations that make immigration a complicated, lonely, and sometimes dangerous experience. Sometimes, there is simply nobody around to talk to about these feelings, so I want to give voice to these stories, too.

How do you balance the interplay between objective data and personal experiences in your art?

Data is often incomplete; it can be biased, just as our perception of reality is also inherently partial and subjective. But to some degree, we rely on both. This is the bridge between data art and personal experiences. I am trying to demonstrate that these different ways of understanding reality and talking about it are methods that co-exist— ones that we combine every day. I think many people are interested in data as well as understanding their own emotions because there is a hope that these methods may close the gap between subjective and objective reality and can lead the way to a better life. 

Your works have been showcased internationally and published by platforms like Vice and UN Women. Which of these collaborations or exhibitions has been most meaningful to you, and why?

All of my collaborations were meaningful and important, and I am grateful for all of them. UN Women was a fantastic opportunity to praise Women in STEM, and it warms my heart to see these pictures circulating around the internet every year, reminding us of the great women who made breakthroughs in science. I am delighted that Vice loved my comics, and it was exciting to see them published.
My collaboration with Barabasi Lab is very meaningful because it gave me the opportunity of working at the intersection of art and science with many amazing people. In this sense, the Ludwig Museum and Postmasters Gallery exhibitions were transformative. 
I also collaborated with researcher and performer Alina Sokulska for a long time. This partnership was very special,  as it gave me the opportunity to create a brand identity for a research-driven educational and artistic initiative. It is transformative for my artistic practice to work with like-minded people who give you total freedom and total trust. I am also grateful for the New Alliance Gallery Exhibition that happened this month because it showed some of my work on digital loneliness and immigration. I love the site and the community there; it gives me good feelings and energy.

What challenges do you face when translating deeply personal or societal themes into digital art, and how do you overcome them?

I think it is important to recognize that data is not always complete or entirely factual, even if it has a reputation for being so. Finding the right data and understanding it requires investigation, which is exciting but sometimes challenging. There is also the asymmetry of knowledge, with some companies gatekeeping data and selling it at enormous costs. It is important to reflect on how much I can rely on the data I have and how complete my story is.
On the other hand, with personal experiences, the story is really what the person told me. I do not question people's emotions. I try to capture that emotion that I sense within the story. I feel responsible for what data and experience I highlight and how I combine these parts together. It is always a process of reflection and takes a lot of iterations and searches. 

Ultimately, what messages would you like to convey with your art?

I believe that art exists to help us process our lived experiences. Through my work, I aim to capture the beauty and pain of change. Also, ask the following question: How do we search for facts and rely on them during this process? I want to explore how sometimes so-called facts are incomplete and in progress… and how subjective perception can feel deeplyauthentic and very, very real.
At the heart of what I am doing is also hope. For me, hope is an agent of change and curiosity. During some very complex and even traumatizing periods in my life, hope and curiosity have helped me to keep going, adapt, and develop new knowledge and tools. My goal is to speak to the same sense of hope and curiosity in my audience.

What are you currently working on, and what directions or themes are you excited to explore in future projects?

I am currently working on a project about women immigrants' personal experiences, plus data about immigration in the U.S. 
I am also working on the Bestselling Books Project that I shared with you here for the first time. This project explores data about book genres and how the genres are social constructs we use to label and sell. To explore this, my collaborator — network scientist Yiuxan Liu and I —   started working with open-source data on best sellers. We gathered information on how many copies were sold and how people defined the subjects of these books.
We found that the words people use to label books are not exactly genres, but some tag words, and my understanding of the topic shifted. Initially, I wanted to rationalize the display of this information or somehow 'sort it out,' but ultimately, we decided to show how it is. If the top commonly-used description for many bestsellers such as Lord of The Rings or Harry Potter is a 'large type book,' so be it.
The data artworks I shared with you represent these topics and how our understanding of them evolved. The colors represent the subjects, and the size of each book represents the amount of sales. I parsed the actual book proportions and used this to scale them based on the number of sales. We also explored the language of the original publication, which governed the type of outline each book has.

And lastly, where do you see yourself and your work in five years from now? 

I am interested in understanding how human and animal brains work, and I would like to work at the intersection of psychology and data art. However, it's honestly hard to say for certain. I would like to just let my curiosity and my questions guide me. I hope that in five years' time, I'll be asking better questions.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.