“For me now the more important question by far is not ‘What am I going to depict?’ but ‘How am I going to depict it?’” Victoria Lomasko by Audra McNamee
Victoria Lomasko
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Victoria Lomasko was born in Serpukhov, Russia in 1978, and graduated in 2003 from the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, where she majored in graphic art and book design. She works as a graphic artist and has lectured and written widely on graphic reportage. Lomasko draws on Russian traditions of reportage drawing (as practiced during the Siege of Leningrad, in the Gulag, and within the military). In her own graphic reportage work, Lomasko explores current Russian society, especially the inner workings of the country’s diverse communities and groups, such as Russian Orthodox believers, LGBT activists, migrant workers, sex workers, and collective farm workers. As a graphic reportage artist, she has collaborated with both the mass media and human rights organizations, and her work has been exhibited at numerous shows in Russia and abroad. Lomasko is the co-author of the book Forbidden Art, which was nominated for the Kandinsky Prize in 2010. Her book Other Russias is in its third printing from n+1, and she has written many additional works of graphic reportage documenting life in Russia and its neighboring countries. She is also an established curator of major international exhibitions, including The Feminist Pencil and Drawing the Court. Her work has been exhibited in numerous shows in Russia and abroad. As a volunteer for the Center for Prison Reform, Lomasko visited Mozhaysk Juvenile Prison and taught inmates to draw. She additionally taught drawing classes at girls’ penitentiaries in Novy Oskol and Ryazan, and the boy’s penitentiary in Aleskin. She lives in Moscow.
