Born in 1970, St. Petersburg. She lives and works in St. Petersburg.

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    [...] In Ibsen's drama, Julian recalls Adonis, who lived in two worlds - that of the living and that of his illusions and aesthetic preferences, i.e. the world of the dead, the world of the Classical Antiquity and philosophers. Adonis repeatedly dies and is reborn, as it were: his outer coldness and his inner fiery, destructive passion reminding me of Ludwig of Bavaria. [...] Ibsen's drama presents the quintessence of the heroes' diametrically opposed characters and aspirations, of those heroes who were Ibsen's contemporaries. As both a pragmatist and a seer, Ibsen demonstrates to his readers what is the fate of those who choose such a path [...].
    In creating my series of illustrations, therefore, I found myself facing the problem of selecting the setting for the events. Ibsen attached great importance to describing the setting within which events unfolded. It was more important to me to render the intensity of the heroes' feelings, emotions and thoughts than to meticulously illustrate their actions. Recalling the fact that Ludwig of Bavaria dreamed of creating an ideal town and seeking, through his ambassadors to Russia, to purchase the Crimean peninsula from the Russian government in order to build there an ideal city for artists and intellectuals, I decided to move the photographic setting for the subjects to the Crimea, using its own fantastical landscapes in place of scenery. The surrounding nature helped create an atmosphere of psychological tension, to convey the inner states of the heroes. It became a symbol of the events themselves [...] Today, when humanity finds itself perpetually at a market place on market day, when modern museums have assumed the role of medieval puppet-shows and circus performances, whereas fast food has replaced long ceremonial dinners, we should recall the value of the canon and of purity of perception in order to bring to mind those wonderful ideals of beauty which will accompany us as we pass into other worlds.
    Truth or beauty? - such is the question that tortures Julian. Such was the conflict within contemporary art of the 20^th century. In working on this project I sought to embody in my works not only the ides of Ibsen but also my own version, my own way out of the crisis in which art has found itself in the last decades.

O. T.