Split Origin: cell as duality by Nataya

Interview with Nataya

1. What does “Split Origin” mean to you on a personal level?

For me, it’s an emotional blueprint. It’s how I process contradiction—how softness and structure coexist. “Split Origin” is rooted in my own history: being shaped by more than one culture, one discipline, one truth. It’s a meditation on being multiple.

2. Your work bridges both the digital and tactile—how do you approach that balance?

I start with materials in mind—metal, skin, pigment—even if the final piece is digital. That grounding keeps the work visceral. The code is the architecture, but the intuition comes from touch. The screen becomes a surface, like a canvas or fabric.

3. How do biological forms influence your visual language?

Cells, tissues, neural webs—they fascinate me. Not for their science, but their metaphor. They speak to interconnection and vulnerability. I use them to build imagined anatomies, where identity dissolves and reforms in unfamiliar shapes.

4. What emotional states do you try to evoke through your figures?

There’s always tension—between control and surrender, rigidity and melt. I’m interested in the moment just before change, the threshold. My figures aren’t static portraits; they’re emotional echoes—quiet, uneasy, tender.

5. How does your background in painting inform your digital practice?

Color and gesture are still everything. Even in simulation, I paint. I layer, erase, blend. That muscle memory from painting lets me guide the digital with my instincts. It’s not a binary switch—it’s a continuation.

6. Many viewers describe your work as haunting. What role does beauty play in that?

I don’t aim for beauty, but I also don’t avoid it. I think beauty disarms. It draws people into discomfort. My work often seduces before it unsettles. That contradiction is intentional—it mimics the emotional experience of transformation.

7. Do you consider your art political?

Subtly, yes. Not in slogans, but in how it questions categories—of gender, body, selfhood. When you show forms that can’t be named easily, it destabilizes the systems that rely on labels. That’s political, even in silence.

8. What future directions do you see for “Split Origin”?

It’s expanding. I’m working on immersive environments now—letting viewers step inside the dualities. Not just to see the body split, but to feel it. To walk through the paradox. The cell was just the start. Now, I want to build the whole organism.