Anastasia Shik
Anastasia Shik’s artistic practice emerges from a childhood shaped by instability, contradiction, and survival. Born during the collapse of the USSR, she grew up in an environment she describes as marked by destruction and brokenness, where even basic needs were often absent. Within that chaos, art and literature became essential tools rather than luxuries. Surrealism and symbolism entered her work early, functioning as ways to negotiate normality against disorder and to construct meaning where none was readily available.
Despite limited opportunities, Shik traveled abroad from a young age and spent time in European museums, experiences that left a deep and lasting imprint. She absorbed artworks with intense focus, memorizing not only images but atmospheres and emotional registers. These encounters forged a profound internal connection to art, long before the idea of becoming an artist felt imaginable. There was no single moment of realization or calling; life was too consumed by survival for that. Instead, art became a means of emotional regulation. Shik learned to externalize overwhelming emotions through creative work, a fluency that continues to shape the emotional clarity and psychological depth present in her practice.
Shik holds a master’s degree in finance and worked professionally in that field before turning fully toward art. When the opportunity arose to process personal history and articulate it publicly, she pursued further education and was accepted into the Paris College of Art for a Master of Fine Arts. Although circumstances, including rapid career growth and raising three young children, prevented completion of the degree, formal education did not mark an endpoint. Learning remains central to her life and work. Research, reading, and sustained intellectual inquiry continue outside institutional frameworks, reinforcing a belief that education is ongoing and self-directed.
Experimentation is constant. Shik works across media and styles, driven by curiosity and a refusal to remain static. Each year brings deeper attention to detail and greater conceptual density, as newly acquired knowledge is folded into visual form. Themes in the work are not isolated but interconnected, evolving through sustained research and reading. Aesthetic influences include the Italian Renaissance, Spanish Modern Art, and Italian Novecento, while political and philosophical thinking draws from French art and a wide range of writers, including Daniel Kahneman, John Rawls, Erich Fromm, Kant, Hume, Daniel Dennett, John Dewey, Darwin, Dostoevsky, and Daron Acemoglu.
Shik’s creative process is rigorous and structured, grounded in routine rather than spontaneity. Work begins with identifying emotional states and underlying questions, followed by deep immersion in literature. Ideas accumulate through research until they take visual form, often first through photography. Early drafts are fragmented and refined through dialogue with curators and critical feedback. Final works remain open to revision, as clarity rather than completion defines resolution. Inspiration is constant, drawn from exhibitions, travel, and direct engagement with art history. Creative blocks are not recognized as obstacles but absorbed into ongoing process.
The work carries an explicit ethical and humanist orientation. Shik addresses the complexity of being human in a divided world, emphasizing choice, agency, and the possibility of social progress over cruelty. Art functions as a reminder of shared humanity and as an invitation toward gentleness, responsibility, and awareness, especially in moments of political and social darkness. Success is measured through resonance rather than recognition, defined by moments when the work is truly felt and emotionally received.
Current projects continue to investigate democracy, power, environmental crisis, artificial intelligence, and the erosion of human values under contemporary pressure. Shik remains committed to pursuing difficult questions without regard for trends, guided instead by personal philosophy and lived experience. Collaboration is ongoing and relational, particularly with the people photographed, understood not as subjects but as active contributors whose presence shapes the work. Across all projects, the practice insists on staying human, attentive, and ethically awake in a world that increasingly resists those qualities.
