the turquoise ether magazine’s mission is to publish independent critical reviews of promising artists from over The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Turquoise #20 | Anastasia Zotova (Russia)

Author’s note:

Creosote [ˈkrēəˌsōt] is an oily liquid used to treat the rail sleepers, including those in the subway. The smell of creosote is often perceived as the “smell of the subway”, which is so familiar to every me big city citizen.

Anastasia (kreazot) Zotova has always been a very important part of the urbex community; she is a person whose works are inextricably linked with the period of 2010s when urban exploration as a hobby “went viral” moving from a marginal pursuit into wider public interest.

At the time when internet blogs of roofers, diggers and abandoned aesthetic lovers of all kinds popped up like mushrooms after a rain, Anastasia’s morbid graphics depicting the intertwining veins of underground cities hung at the exhibition in an hidden cable tunnel, one of the prominent Moscow urbex dens.

So it“s only logical that Anastasia chose to illustrate Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ as her graduate work when completing her graphic arts degree. In this fantasy book Neil Gaiman imagined a kind of sub-London and tied its geography to the city”s underground junctions. The flyleaf in Anastasia’s illustrated version depicts a map of this parallel underground world where the main characters of the novel live. Her illustrations turned out to be so evocative that Neil himself spoke highly of them and wrote to Anastasia that he wanted to publish this version of the book.

Anastasia“s love for detailed research is already evident from this flyleaf. Many artists try to project emotion. Anastasia”s works project knowledge. Accurate and with a peculiar morbid charm. An exhilarating journey into an unfamiliar and slightly frightening world.

Anastasia confidently blazes her own professional path as an infographics artist fully realising her artistic potential. From Jurassic period to Dante’s hell or spaceships — all her works show unfettered curiosity, engineering mind and excellent drawing technical skills as well as her own personal style developed over many years.

Although a very active and prolific artist, Anastasia’s heart is firmly with the underground.

She has been a key member of the Museum of Modern Fortification team from its very inception, for which she curates runs exhibitions.

Anastasia’s sectional views of tunnels and bunkers now hang underground once again but this time as part of an official exhibition.

And in 2021 she illustrated a book about Soviet bunkers based on declassified data about these amazing structures.

Anastasia is a digger by vocation and in spirit — she loves to “dig” into a topic until she understands it thoroughly and discovers something in it that no one has seen before. I’m excited to see what she will uncover next!

Author:

Anton Medvedev, art critic