Julia Kissina (born 1966) is a German and Russian artist and writer. She was born in

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Early life and education

Kissina was born in 1966 in Kyiv, Ukraine, to a Jewish family, and studied dramatic writing at the

Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, officially the S. A. Gerasimov All-Russian University of Cinematography (, meaning ''All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov''), a.k.a. VGIK, is a film school in Moscow, ...

(VGIK). A political refugee, she immigrated to Germany in 1990, where she later graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

Life and work

"Influenced by the Moscow Conceptualists of the 1980s, as well as the avant-gardes of the literary underground in Russia at the time", Kissina has been a regular contributor to two of Russia's

Samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

literature journals, ''Obscuri Viri'' and ''Mitin Journal''. Her début short novel was ''Of the Dove's Flight Over the Mud of Phobia'' (1992). Kissina's poetry and prose subsequently appeared in journals and anthologies, including the anthology of modern Russian literature, ''Russian Flowers of Evil'' (1997). Her first collection of stories in German ''Vergiss Tarantino'' (tr: Forget Tarantino) was published in 2005, the same year as her children's book ''Milin und der Zauberstift'' (tr: Milin and the Magic Pencil). Her style, characterized by whimsical humor, precise observations of social conflicts and a distinct sense of the absurd, can be described as auto-fictional fabulism. An essential theme of her work is "civilization and its discontents". Despite intertextual experiments with words and subjects, her books are intricately plotted. Her novel ''Frühling auf dem Mond'' (2013, tr: Springtime on the Moon) draws from her childhood in the 1970s Kyiv, exploring the tragic dynamic between surreal perception and bureaucratic despotism. Written in a similar style, her novel ''Elephantinas Moskauer Jahre'' (2016, tr: Elephantina's Moscow Years) is a coming-of-age story about a young woman who moves to Moscow to explore the depths of the artistic underground in search of true poetry. Schaf 4

Kissina is also a visual artist who made conceptual photography in the 1990s. In 2000, she herded an actual flock of sheep into the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt as part of a performance. She also co-curated the Art & Crime Festival at the

Hebbel Theater The Hebbel-Theater (Hebbel Theatre) is a historic theatre building for plays in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany. It has been a venue of the company Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) from 2003. The theatre, with approximately 800 seats, was built by Oskar Kaufmann ...

, Berlin, in 2003 and performed in a German prison. In 2006 she created The Dead Artist's Society, which held séances to conduct "Dialogues with Classics" such as Duchamp and Malevich.

Publications

* ''The Devil's Childhood'', novel, Obscuri viri, Moscow, 1993 * ''The Dove's Flight Over the Mud of Phobia'', novel, Obscuri viri, Moscow, 1997 * ''Simple Desires'', Alethea, St. Petersburg, 2001 (Nominated for the

Andrei Bely Prize The Andrei Bely Prize () is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of ''Hours'', the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, p ...

) * ''Forget Tarantino'',

Aufbau ''Aufbau'' () is a term which was used in publications from 1919 to 1947 in the German language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is ...

, Berlin, 2005; * ''The Smile of the Ax'', Colonna, St. Petersburg/Prague, 2007 * ''Milin and the Magic Pencil'', children's book,

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural institution, cultural, intellectual, and educational ...

/Berlin, 2005 * ''Springtime on the Moon'', novel, Azbuka, St. Petersburg, 2012; German. Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2013; Fabula, Ukraine, 2016 * ''Elephantinas Moscow Years'', novel,

Suhrkamp Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and is generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag. In January 2010, ...

, Berlin, 2016; Zvezda, St. Petersburg, 2015; Fabula, Ukraine, 2017

Art books

* ''Dead Artists Society'', Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, 2010 * ''When Shadows Cast People'', Peperoni, Berlin, 2010 * ''Dead Artists Society'', The Library of Moscow Conceptualism, Russia, 2011

Anthologies and collections

* ''Russian flowers of the evil'', ed. Viktor Yerofeev,

Eksmo Eksmo Publishing House was founded in 1991. At first the company worked in the field of wholesale trade in books, since 1993 it started independent publishing activities. In 2012, the publishing house became part of the structure of the publish ...

, Moscow,1997 * ''Les fleurs du mal'', A. Michel, Paris, 1997 * ''I fiori del male russi'', Voland, Rome, 2001 * ''A Thousand Poets, One Language'', A Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum Foundation, Dubai, 2009 * ''Ruské kvety zla'', Belimex, Slovakia, 2001 * ''Contemporary Russian Prose'', ed.

Vladimir Sorokin Vladimir Georgiyevich Sorokin (; born 7 August 1955) is a postmodern Russian writer of novels, short stories, and plays. He has been described as one of the leading and most popular writers in contemporary Russian literature. Sorokin became k ...

Zakharov Zakharov (), or Zakharova (feminine; Захарова) is a Russian surname. Notable people with the surname include: People * Aleksandr Zakharov, multiple people * Alexander V. Zakharov (born 1941), Soviet and Russian scientist *Anastasia Zakharov ...

, Moscow, 2003 * ''Il casualitico'' (

Fernando Pessoa Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (; ; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, and publisher. He has been described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th c ...

Amélie Nothomb Baroness Fabienne Claire Nothomb (; born 13 August 1967''État présent de la noblesse belge'', éditions of 1979, 1995 and 2010. Her birth is announced in n° 87, aout 1967, p. 340 of the ''Bulletin de l'association de la noblesse du royaume de ...

, Valentino Zaichen, Renzo Paris,

Franco Purini Franco Purini, born as Francesco Purini (Isola del Liri, 9 November 1941), is an Italian architect, essayist, and university professor. He has designed many buildings, including the Torre Eurosky in Rome. He studied architecture in Rome with Lud ...

, Kissina), Voland, Rome, 2003 * ''21 new storytellers'' DTV, Munich, 2003 * ''Tema lesarva'', Gabo, Budapest, 2005 * ''Cuentos rusos'', Siruela, Madrid, 2006

Editor and curator

* ''Revolution Noir: Autoren der russischen "neuen Welle"''. German. Suhrkamp, Berlin, 2017. . An anthology of contemporary Russian avant-garde literature including the work of

, Pavel Pepperstein, Youlia Belomlinskaja and others, translated into German. * ''In Riga. A Memoir''. By

Boris Lurie Boris Lurie (July 18, 1924 – January 7, 2008) was an American artist and writer. He co-founded the NO!Art movement which calls for socially and politically involved art that would resist and combat the forces of the market. His controversial ...

. Edited and introduced by Kissina. Printed in the USA. . * Berlin / New York = Urban Dictionary literature festival, Summer, 2018; curator. Urban Dictionary brought together writers and poets from Berlin and New York.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kissina, Julia 1966 births Living people 21st-century Russian women writers Artists from Berlin Ukrainian women novelists Ukrainian novelists Russian women novelists Russian novelists Ukrainian poets Ukrainian women poets Russian poets Russian women poets Ukrainian children's writers Russian children's writers Ukrainian women children's writers Russian women children's writers Ukrainian photographers Ukrainian women photographers Russian photographers Russian women photographers