Anna: How do you feel your background and your experiences have influenced your artistic practice? You talk about your experience as a Ukrainian immigrant in Western Europe.

Mariya: I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. When I was 12, I moved to Germany with my family. Later on, I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and then moved to Vienna. I moved to Germany at a very sensitive age, and my personality was caught between two societies. When you move to a new country as a young child, you assimilate quickly. When you come as a young adult, you identify more with your home country. But at 12, you're neither here nor there. I came from a very big city, and we moved to a very small one, so it was a cultural shock. And I didn't speak German. I stuttered so intensely that sometimes I couldn't talk. This was a big problem because, as a child, you learn languages by speaking to others, and I couldn't. So, I was very culturally isolated. I quickly discovered the world of the internet: Tumblr, Flickr, and all these under-ground communities for young creatives. And it inspired me to start with photography. And I instead discovered this visual language. When I was 14, I started to take my first self-portraits. I didn't have friends who could model. So I thought, well, fuck it. In my room, I did my first set of stagings. With my very cheap camera, I took my first photos and posted them on Flickr, Tumblr, or these societies to connect with other people, with other young adults. This was between 2008- 2010. It was a culture of self-portraits. You may be familiar with this, but surreal self-portraits were a huge trend. So that's how this all started. By the time I was about to finish high school, I had a huge portfolio of photos. My art teacher saw it by accident and was like, 'Wow, Mariya. You should go into arts; you should apply to an Art Academy.' I was like, what's that? I had no idea.

Anna: You hadn't considered it before that?

Mariya: No, I didn't. My family wasn't into arts at all. Coming from a classical Soviet engineering family, my relatives are engineers and military, no artists at all. I didn't know that world existed. Once I discovered it, I knew what I wanted to do. When I was 20, I went to the art academy in Munich and started transforming my photo collages into videos. And I also began performing. So it started when I was 20.

Anna: I'm interested in hearing more about the conflict between the society you were born into and the society you came into, because I know you address many topics like sexuality and religion and ethical norms, etc.

Mariya: Yes, I was between Western and Eastern European societies. But I was also in between religions. As a child in Kyiv I went to a Jewish school. Judaism is full of symbols, which I appreciated. I went to the Ukrainian Orthodox church all the time with my grandmother. I didn't feel I was a part of it, but I was fascinated. When I came to Germany, I was surrounded by more of a catholic and protestant environment. I could pull from all these religions, their symbolism, and their iconography, and weave them into my fantasy, making them into this huge collage.

Anna: So it's the iconography, the archetypes, the symbolism that you're drawn to, though you feel that you're a bit of an outsider from each experience.

Mariya: Yeah, absolutely. I think outsider is a good word.

Anna: Given that you're the subject of most of your work, or the sole performer, how do you approach the vulnerability that comes with centering yourself in your narratives?

Mariya: I've worked with my body for 15 years already. For me, my body is just an instrument. It's become a perfect, well-working instrument, like a canvas. Vulnerability exists for me- it's part of my work- but it doesn't come through engagement with my body. The vulnerability comes through in the topics. All my ideas, and all these videos, are very personal. They all have some autobiographical elements, not only Soviet Baroque, which is very obviously personal because I did the video shots in the flat where I grew up with my grandmother, but all my works contain something from my life. Some things are very hidden. Some things are not so hidden. For example, when I was a child, I accidentally found some porn tapes from my parents.

Anna: Like the old-fashioned VCRs?

Mariya: Yeah, some had BDSM elements. So it wasn't classical porn - it was very bizarre porn, and I saw this as a child. And some of these elements are reproduced in my videos now. What I'm trying to convey is that it's all personal and emotional. It's not about showing my body. People ask me, oh my god, is it okay for you to be naked? Or to perform naked? In public? And it's like, no, performing naked is not that interesting. But what I'm showing, because I'm showing my emotions and my life, that's where the vulnerability comes in.

Anna: How do you feel your work challenges traditional norms or archetypes surrounding women?

Mariya: I use my body for different roles and different scenarios. And often, the scenarios are about these power games, like I'm playing the victim but also the bad guy. I'm recreating this dynamic you find in society. These psychological power games of 'Who here has bigger balls'? I play the female roles, the male ones - not women and men, but archetypes of what we classify in patriarchal societies as "male" and "female". I do all this ironic stuff. My work has a lot of humor. And this is where I, as a woman, create power. So I'm saying, okay, we exist in this patriarchal society, but we can make fun of it.

Anna: I see that in your work. One, where you've become a human centipede, and she's being milked -put in that role of being a woman. I thought that was very interesting, too. I was thinking about how it's so permissible for us to be dehumanized in these socially acceptable ways, being objectified as 'the mother' or any of the other archetypal roles we're forced into, but then there are some forms of so-called dehumanization that are seen as - maybe not inappropriate, but more on the fringe of what's acceptable, like BDSM, etc. I think you play a lot with this dehumanization theme and the way you're digitally altering your body. How did you really get into that theme of digitally transforming yourself?

Mariya: Because I did photography first, and then I came to video, all the techniques I used in photography and photo collages were translated into video production. And I also enjoy it. I enjoy playing with my body and seeing how I can destroy it, destroy my identity, and create a new one out of it. Because I'm not really playing a character like an actor is playing a character in a movie. It's about what I'm doing with the body and how I'm making something different out of the body.

Anna: Is there some element of taking ownership of the usage of your own body and having the power to do that?

Mariya: There definitely is.

Anna: Are there any main artists or artistic movements that you've been inspired by or drawn from in your work?

Mariya: I used to say three artists influenced me the most. Louise Bourgeois. Francesca Woodman. And Matthew Barney.

Anna: So why is this a past answer?

Mariya: Like most artists, I have moments when I don't want to work and need some kind of inspiration. And in the past, I'd look through the works from Francesca, Bourgeois, or Matthew Barney, and get inspired again, and now it doesn't work anymore. They're in the past, and now - okay, I'm much more inspired by paintings by Dutch and Italian painters from the 14th century, the early Renaissance. So that's where I find the magic.

Anna: So how do you feel that you're working this 14th-century inspiration into your medium, which is very modern in its medium -video and digital alteration? Is it mainly the symbolism that comes with it or aesthetically as well?

Mariya: I think it's because, in the Renaissance, painting was not only about art. It was also born out of mathematics. They experimented with space and perspective. And that's what I like too- I like doing experiments in my videos to work out my own digital aesthetic. When I make digital collages, I do many things on my own. So I don't use templates, like when I work with a 3D human body, I don't go and find free templates of the human body, but I do a scan of my body.