The Psychopolitica Art Gallery

Introducing Lena Rybina

A few weeks ago, a friend came to visit me in Yerevan. She’s an artist, a mother of two beautiful kids, an owner of two beautiful dogs, and a wife to the guitarist of the anti-regime, anti-war, and therefore banned Russian rock band Pornofilmy.

She has worked as a waitress, a stewardess, a kindergarten teacher, and during it all she’s always made art — drawings, paintings, puppets, sculptures made of scrap, little video installations — but never really felt she could call herself an artist. That’s a big word, what right does she have to call herself that?

That’s been changing, slowly, over the past year. She manages, on some days better than others, to put the doubt and the labels aside and simply do work — or, to put it more accurately, play. Beautiful art appears as a result.

One day during her stay here, she came to me feeling restless and said “Give me an assignment. Some theme to make a drawing about.”

I said, “Ancient aliens.”

A few hours later, she showed me the result: