Sasha Pivovarova on Women Artists, Motherhood, and Her Art Collab with Dior
The model, mother, and creative Sasha Pivovarova has been making artwork her entire life. "I’m an expressionist," she tells me, at the Dior New York Fashion Week event she created installations around. Body-shaped sculptures made of colorful tape, paintings, collages, and an entire white room which she painted with expressive faces were all fair game for her when curating her own work for the exhbition. As for the room, she painted it the day before the event and had it filmed for party guests to watch while sipping champagne cocktails. "The idea was to show the life of the room and the way it’s transformed," she says.
The black, drippy faces are similar to her spring campaign for Dior, in which she also painted imagery for and modeled alongside it. It all played into Dior Artistic Director Maria Grazia Chiuiri's Spring theme too: women artists. During the event, we chatted with Pivovarova about the women artists who have inspired her, how being a mother has influenced her work and how art has always been her lifelong passion.
How does being a woman artist inspire your work?
It’s a very big opportunity for me and I’m very thankful to Maria Grazia Chiuri who believes in my art and believes in my creativity. She's a woman herself, who has a mother—she’s such a talented person in different aspects. I think it’s very powerful for all women around the world, and even my exhibition can show and translate this message. It can be not only housewives and mothers. Mothers are beautiful, I’m a mother myself.
But also just more than one thing: we’re multi-functional. We think differently and we’re not like boys. Boys focus on one thing, we can do much more. We can [do] everything. We’re mothers, supermodels, artists, designers, whatever we want. The world is so different now. As a mother again, I see that it’s changing and it’s changing in the right way. Intuition, what a woman brings into the male world is going to change things. There’s going to be more opportunities for our daughters and the next generation. More doors will open.
What's the story behind your sculptures?
My sculptures are my babies, my Venus, my Madonna! I like to recycle art. You can see my series of art where I use tape. I found it on my daughter’s desk—five colors, and I started with like a mosaic, like an old style. I like the idea that you can take this material that basically ruins the whole planet Earth and they can make art out of it—something beautiful. Also, the very important point is that for thousands of years, art was made in stone. For 600 years, it was made in canvas and paper. They were the priority, they were the material. Now, it’s a new technology and new techniques so that’s why I show this in my exhibition. I show different series of work displayed. I want people to come there and be in my world.
Why has art always been a passion for you?
I’ve been doing art all my life. I just never stopped. Every child can draw. But at five years old, some kids start to play with cars some kids start to play with dolls. I just never stopped playing with paints. I love the different colors. I grew up in the Soviet Union, the grayest world you can imagine. No color at all. The blue was only the sky, the yellow was only the sun. Basically, growing up in a gray world I appreciate color so much. I love beauty, I love fashion. There was not many nice, beautiful items so I would pick up stuff from my mother’s wardrobe, redesign it… All my life, I need to express myself through some creative medium, so basically this exhibition is an expression of my world. Everything I touch has a Sasha stamp on it.
Finally, what women artists have you been inspired by?
There are so many women artists, and I’m really happy that we get appreciated more and more. Niki de Saint Phalle, Cindy Sherman. I like women’s art because it’s the whole world. It’s not like on one side, you see one painting. You need to see the whole collection. Like there’s 50 dresses—you need to see it all for the full fairy tale. It’s the same with art. When you see one painting maybe it’s not enough, but when you go through the book, you get into the world of this person and that’s very powerful.
Photographer: Kate Owen