The stealthy beauty of Sibirskaya

Alisa Sibirskaya turns the concept of beauty upside down with her exhibition 'Stealth Beauty', where she creates scenes that evoke the pictorial tradition of vanities, but with a clear objective: to question the foundations of a society where everything seems reduced to a consumer product.

Born in Krasnoiarsk in 1989, Sibirskaya explores the relationship between mortality and everyday life from an introspective and critical perspective. Drawing inspiration from the painting masters of the 16th and 17th centuries, he turns to the visual elements of these classics and reinterprets them with a modern language. Through a hybrid of hyperrealism and oneirism, it offers an x-ray of reality, evoking both religious and secular allegories. From depictions of original sin to vanities, through mythic and folkloric figures, his work connects with the essence of these traditional compositions—those scenes of withered flowers, decaying fruit, and skulls that remind us of the brevity of life and the ephemerality of earthly pleasures—. However, instead of baroque allegories, his work is a reflection of the excesses and banality of contemporary society. The genre of vanitas that Sibirskaya works on aims to remind us of the transience of existence; in his work, however, this tradition seems to speak to a world driven mad by consumption and overproduction.

'In the kitchen' © Alisa Sibirskaya

The exhibition, curated by Natàlia Chocarro as part of the Vanishing Points program of the Vila Casas Foundation, includes a series of photographs in which the warm lighting and the fragile expressions of the characters create an atmosphere of nostalgia that crosses time, where past and present are mixed to create a subtle critique of superficiality.

Sibirskaya, after training in music and theater in her native Siberia, traveled through Europe, settling first in Madrid and then in Barcelona, where she began to develop her photographic work. For her, photography is a fusion of arts that not only captures the moment, but transforms it. As he explains, his images are like a personal diary, his way of communicating with the world.

His link with Siberia is inseparable from his work. The cold, icy landscapes, lack of color and inhospitable romanticism of the region are reflected in his artistic perspective and visual imagery. Although his photography is not explicitly activist, his work contains a strong charge of social criticism: Sibirskaya left Russia to oppose the Putin regime and defend the LGBTI community, a stance that subtly permeates her images.

Until February 23 at the Russian Museum in Malaga, Sibirskaya invites us to immerse ourselves in a universe where time seems to stand still, but where social criticism resonates strongly.

'Dream' © Alisa Sibirskaya