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Masha Lam (1986)

A multidisciplinary artist focused on the problems of interaction between the synthetic and natural environment.
The focus of my work is concentrated on the problem of human appropriation and displacement of the natural environment. On how the way we choose to live affects the world around us.

Based in St. Petersburg, Russia.


PERSONAL STATEMENT

The focus of my work is concentrated on the problem of human appropriation and displacement of the natural environment. On how the way we choose to live affects the world around us.
To represent living, organic objects, I use synthetic, artificially created mediums, such as plastic, vinyl stickers, fingerprint film, digital animation. This choice of mediums was made by me consciously, in order to demonstrate on a sensory and emotional level what the surrounding world would be like if the organic was forever replaced by the artificial. 
The realistic visual part of the work is very important for me, it allows me to convey the idea unambiguously, directly, and frankly, without giving room for interpretation. It almost makes the viewer look at the problem with my eyes. But at the same time, the drawings and installations look ephemeral, incorporeal. The transparent surfaces of the materials and drawings, the stingy palette distance themselves from reality.
Post-irony is one of the key tricks in my practice. Despite the general weariness of the idealized picture, most people still choose a standardized norm. Reasonable sufficiency in everyday life is replaced by the desire for an exaggerated consumer ideal. This approach gives rise to many environmental problems. Therefore, at the center of my attention, I choose objects and phenomena that, under the influence of human activity, lose their natural essence, their function and transformed into a kind of artificial irrational artifact. The idea is well illustrated by the project I am currently working on. This is a series of greenhouses decorated with plastic ruffles almost beyond recognition. The seeds here are small tablets disguised as berries. And the fruits are faux fur cherries. 
I think visual art is one of the most effective tools that can draw attention to the issues of sustainable consumption and sustainable development, influence the formation of an individual's perception of the world.