Nata Drachinskaya is a visual artist based in Santa Clara, CA, USA. The central theme in her artistic practice is the subjective study of the mechanism of de-construction and re-construction of memories to cope with tough times. She was born in the USSR, left Moscow in 2022, then lived in Armenia, UAE, and finally moved to the U.S. Her personal background of post-soviet life and relocation is a part of her work. Her favorite mediums are concrete sculptures, photography and analogue collages.

Nata graduated from the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA Moscow, Russia) and participated in art residencies in Japan, Hungary, Georgia, and Russia. She works with sculpture, photography, collage, video, and performance.

Her works have been exhibited in the places such as Pacific Art League (Palo Alto, CA, USA), Nick Gallery (Pécs, Hungary), Art Kvartal (Yerevan, Armenia), Tbilisi Multimedia Museum (Tbilisi, Georgia), Street Sans Frontier (Paris, France), CCA Winzavod (Moscow, Russia), MOMMA (Moscow, Russia), MAMM (Moscow, Russia), Cube Moscow (Russia), “Presence” Festival by Fotodepartament (Saint-Petersburg, Russia), Festival of contemporary art “Art-subject” (Vladimir, Russia), Blazar art fair (Moscow, Russia) etc.

Education 

2019 - 2021 ICA Moscow (Russia)

2019 - 2020 Institure of Contemporary Photography “Fotodepartament” (Saint-Petersburg, Russia)

2018 - 2019 Project art school curated by Alla Mirovskaya (Moscow, Russia)

2017 - 2017 Master-class “Material experiments with photography” (FOAM, Amsterdam)

Art Residences

2022 Photobook as an Object (RPS, Tokyo, Japan)

2022 The Concrete Symposium sculptural residency (Szigetmonostor, Hungary)

2019 Autumn Awakeness art-residence be M42 (Tbilisi) 

2018-2019 “Writing the place” art-residence by Cultural Center ZIL (Moscow)

Selected Exhibitions 

2024 “Boundaries” exhibition in the New Museum (Los Gatos, CA, USA)

2023 Annual exhibition in the Pacific Art League (Palo Alto, CA, USA)

2023 “Dream Space” gamified meta-verse project with support of Chimera Platform, UK - solo

2023 “Photobook as an Object” (RPS Kyoto Paperoles, Kyoto, Japan)

2022  “Paper dialogue” collective collage performance in the Ren House gallery  (Dubai, UAE)

2022  “BETON ARCAI 7.0” (Nick Gallery, Pécs, Hungary)

2022 ““Perevorot_illustrated” (Yerevan, St. Petersburg, Moscow, New York and Easton) 

2022 “Art of the future” biennale by Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow, Russia) 

2021 “Time of Things” (Winzavod, Moscow)

2021 “Constructor_Death”, Constructor space (Saint-Petersburg, Russia)

2021 “(In)visible cities”, Nagornaya gallery (Moscow, Russia)

2020 “TemperatYRA 2.0”, Electrozavod gallery (Moscow, Russia)

2020 “Photobook and zin: dummy”, Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia)

2020 “Regard (less)”, Cube gallery (Moscow, Russia)

2020 Blazar art fair (Moscow, Russia)

2020 “Baseless”, Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia)

2020 “Winter is here”, Gilyarovsky Center (Moscow, Russia)

2019 Collage exhibition, Gilyarovsky Center (Moscow, Russia)

2019 “Presence” international festival of contemporary photography by Fotodepartament (Saint-Petersburg, Russia)

2019 “Digitaion / Family Diamonds”, art gallery “The Arc”, (Uglich, Russia) - solo

2019 “MoscowMorphosis”, Gilyarovsky Center (Moscow, Russia)

2018 Street Sans Frontières (Paris, France)

2018 Festival of contemporary art “Art-subject” (Vladimir, Russia)

Awards 

2024 “Binom” photobook project is a finalist and has an honorable mention in the Athens Dummy Award (Greece)

2023 Shortlisted in the Portrait: Single image category by the Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards (USA)

2023 “Binom” photobook project is shortlisted by Photobook Award EI 2023 (Encontros da Imagem, Braga, Portugal)

2017 LensCulture Street Photography awards (editors choice) 

2017 London Street Photography (finalist)

2017 Monochrome Awards (honorable mention)

2016 IPA CIS (honorable mention)

CV

Publications and Interviews