Ksenia Lavrova
Big Wigs

Ksenia Lavrova seems to be at home among other cultures and nations. This is in part due to her being an outstanding graphic artist and illustrator – a vocation requiring aptness for inhabiting different characters. Some of her most impressive works are the imaginary ‘portraits’ of past luminaries.

The aged king of France Louis XIV, the embodiment of absolutism and one of Peter the Great’s role models, is seen here drowning in his own wig, on closer inspection resembling a mass of worms. Looking at the king’s haughty features, one cannot help thinking that aging and death spare no one, including those in power.

The famous Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova is also portrayed in his advanced years. By a twist of fate, growing old, the once legendary seducer took on the unassuming job of a librarian at the Count von Waldstein’s castle where he endured abject treatment from servants and household members. Struggling to keep sane, he started writing his memoir, a book that ultimately immortalised him. Lavrova’s Casanova, with his wing-like collar, reminds one of a rare and old caged bird, having lost its erstwhile agility, but discovering surprising inner freedom through the creative act.

Another imaginary portrait is that of Yang Guifei, the fabled consort of the Chinese emperor Xuanzong. Confident and seemingly aware of her impending fate, one of the Four Great Beauties of ancient China stares straight into the viewer’s eyes. Implicated against her will in political manoeuvrings, she will be strangled to death at the orders of her royal lover, but live on in the people’s memory as someone before whom even the flowers bowed in shy obeisance.

No less vivid are the artworks inspired by the Japanese, African, and Arabic cultures. Pushing the constraining conventions of illustration, the artist manages to create compositionally and texturally complex pieces no longer dependent on the source texts that inspired them.

Ksenia Lavrova’s extensive ceramic output mostly comprises hand-painted porcelain tableware. Such series as Legends of Lake Xihu and Taj Mahal instantly transport the viewer to China and India, presenting a gallery of exotic birds – graceful and no less stately than the big-wigged monarchs of yore.