Victoria Lomasko on her LGBT series of drawings

Artist and illustrator Victoria tells why it was essential to work on the LGBT topic (while she's not from LGBT community herself):


In 2013, Russia passed a law banning the “propaganda” or promotion of nontraditional sexual relations among minors. Any information, printed matter or cultural event involving LGBT topics must be labeled “18+”.

The subjects and viewers of my series 18+ often ask why a heterosexual female artist would draw lesbian couples. I have a few answers to that question, but the most truthful would be that what is so fascinating about lesbian clubs is not so much the distinctive sexuality there as the separate feminine environment in which the male’s role at the center of the female universe has been reduced to zero. The chance to depict the complex psychological connections between women is captivating. There are few works from this perspective in art. In public life, attraction between women is almost never manifested.

If I lived in another country, I probably would have limited myself to this search for a new plasticity. In Russia, though, the topic of LGBT is inextricably bound up with political and social issues. When I agreed to serve on the jury of the Side by Side Film LGBT Film Festival in 2013, I realized the extent to which the LGBT community was persecuted. It was only during the festival, however, that I found out there are different levels of secrecy within the community, in particular, that lesbians are more invisible and stigmatized than gays.

“In Russia, the way the majority of people talks boils down to marginalizing others.”


More pictures from this project: https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/victoria-lomasko-18-plus/