My visual practice is centred around the bodies and identities of queer individuals from marginalized communities (Russia and the American South). Being a queer woman who immigrated to the USA following the conservative changes in my home country, I feel it is important not to create more possibly exploitative work about discrimination or queer suffering but to make art focused on the dichotomy of sexuality and nakedness through the lens of the queer femme gaze. My hope is not just to document the lives of marginalized communities that I see my own reflection in, but to create an intimate bond with them using the lens as a gluing agent.
My visual practice is about and for LGBTQIA individuals. I never erase pimples or cellulite in editing; grain and finger grease stains are exposed, the practical flaws and dust of development incorporated into the darkness that surrounds the models. My practice is an attempt to depict queerdom without pressuring the models to actually model, without using the camera voyeuristically. The camera is nothing but a room with a two-way mirror in it, obscuring the interior from those who would leer while allowing the model inside a chance to observe the world without self-consciousness.
BIO:
Elizabeth Rakhilkina is a queer nomad visual artist who brings Russian Renaissance wherever she goes — she has worked in provincial Russia, London, New York and currently she is located in Texas. She has been accepted to the Masters of Fine Arts Photography program in School of Visual Arts that she is about to start in Fall of 2021. Elizabeth’s photography has been exhibited in such prestigious New York galleries such as Allouche Gallery, Root Studio and Martini Shot Collective, and recently in a German virtual gallery and magazine, Blink Berlin. Her visual work showcases distorted human form of women, queers and crossdressers emphasizing the interrelation between the personal and the social in a monochromatic world where marginalized desires also inadvertently but crucially embody political gestures. Her visual practice is centred around the bodies and identities of queer individuals from marginalized communities of the American South. Being a queer woman who immigrated to the USA following the conservative changes in her home country of Russia, Elizabeth feels it is important not to create more possibly exploitative work about discrimination or queer suffering but to make art focused on the dichotomy of sexuality and nakedness through the lens of the queer femme gaze.
https://erakhilkina.squarespace.com/