Conceptual artist Alina Khalitova recently immigrated from Russia because of her anti-war position. The completion of one stage in her life, followed by immigration, led her to see and analyse her art practices more clearly.
At the exhibition Way to Light, we have selected works most indicative of the direction Alina has taken to develop her thinking in recent years. She explores four main areas in her art: space, light, visual perception and context.
Alina has an art historian background and considers everything in a socio-cultural context; therefore, her works are almost always site-specific. The artist notes she likes the intimacy of meeting her work with viewers when it is located in an unexpected place. She believes that this provides an opportunity for elitism to be removed from the exhibition space where the work is usually displayed.
Since her first works, Alina realised that she was fascinated by light, its nature and the effects it produces. Initially, she performed photosensitive experiments with analogue photography, trying to document the moment when light, as a substance, physically presents itself. As she pursued this, her attention shifted towards visual perception.
She explored what happens inside the image frames and how parameters, such …