Natura

” I could still feel that optimism vibrating through the decades: that our bodies are full of power, and furthermore that their power is not despite but because of their manifest vulnerabilities.”
Olivia Laing. «Everybody».

It’s been a year since I started working as a model in the sculpture workshop of the Tbilisi Academy of Arts. The frozen body is like a metaphor for my life, frozen the moment Russia invaded Ukraine and my husband and I moved to Georgia.

In Georgian, Russian, and several other languages, the word ‘Natura’ refers to a model posing for painters and sculptors. In Latin, the same word means nature. Students look at me, study, sculpt and perceive my body as an object for learning. I document the process and results of our work. By being completely naked, I show my openness. This desperate step was taken with the hope of getting closer to others and overcoming the feeling of alienation in exile.

My body is my only home. I will hide in it, as if in a shell, among the trees, mountains and caves, among the ancient places of a foreign country. Nature is what is inside me and what surrounds me, it brings peace and consolation. I am a nature frozen in time, a model for creating a sculpture, I am a sculpture myself. I feel connected to all living creatures, but at the same time I feel alone. I’m trying to integrate into the new world without losing myself, my identity and roots. But who am I? I have character, I must be strong, I must rise up and start moving forward. But for now I look more like a person standing on the station platform while the train rushes past at great speed.

Daria Nazarova (1991, Russia) is a visual artist currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 2015 she graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Ivanovo University. In 2019 she graduated from the Academy Fotografika in St. Petersburg. She works in various media, including photography, photo books, archival research.