Transgression

In my practice, I explore human wholeness as a dynamic state in constant formation. The presented series are part of a big ongoing cycle Transgression, which addresses the alchemical process of transformation of matter as an analogy to human transformation. From wholeness — through rupture, separation, darkness, rebirth and reassembly — to building new connections and a new wholeness.

The series echoes the stages of the alchemical process Separatio, Nigredo, Albedo, Formatio. Alchemy is read here as an early model of thinking about the formation and transformation of matter and the human.

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The series also refers to Otto Scharmer's Theory U, which describes the processes of profound changes in individual and collective systems. According to this model, transformation involves a downward movement – letting go of familiar forms, identities, and ways of acting, passing through a zone of uncertainty and "emptiness" – and a subsequent ascent in which a new understanding and form of action is born.

For me, the cycle works function as a space that allows me to experience the very moment of transition without speeding it up or seeking control. The Transgression cycle offers an attentive presence within change, acceptance of instability as a basic condition of modern existence. In the context of today's global social, cultural and existential shifts, transgression does not become a form of escape from reality, it is a way to be in it without resistance and with conscious openness.

Embodiment

2026

Photography, AI, collage

Part of the Transgression cycle, which addresses the alchemical process of transformation as an analogy for human becoming. Embodiment corresponds to the stage of integrating a new wholeness — the moment when lived experience of dissolution, nullification, and transformation crystallises into a renewed, embodied presence.

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The series examines emergence as a condition of existence: the point at which inner experience becomes visible and enters the world. To emerge here is neither gesture nor strategy, but an inevitable necessity — a way of being present through honesty with oneself, with reality, and with the space of their encounter.

Inner states, lived transformations, and personal truth shift from interiority into exteriority, forming a fragile yet resolute presence. The body and self-portraiture arise not as objects of representation, but as sites of interaction between the inner and the outer, where experience acquires form without becoming fixed.

The moment of embodiment extends beyond the image and unfolds in the encounter with the viewer. Entering the public sphere, the work becomes a zone of vulnerability and openness, where visibility is inseparable from risk. Embodiment is understood not as completion, but as continuous exposure — an ongoing negotiation between inner integrity and presence in the world.

Embodiment 1 — contemporary mixed media artwork by Ksenia Simakova, 2026
Embodiment 2 — expanded photography and collage, 2026
Embodiment 3 — contemporary visual art, 2026
Embodiment 4 — mixed media artwork exploring presence, 2026
Embodiment 5 — contemporary collage and photography, 2026
Embodiment 6 — visual art on transformation, 2026
Embodiment 7 — expanded photography artwork, 2026
Embodiment 8 — contemporary mixed media, 2026
Embodiment 9 — visual art exploring wholeness, 2026
Embodiment 10 — digital collage and photography, 2026

Forming

2026

Photography, collage, photographic print, plasticization, aluminum base

Part of the Transgression cycle. This stage captures the moment when new connections gain density and material presence. What existed as an eidos — a potential structure or idea — passes into an embodied form, becoming tangible and capable of action in the material world.

Forming triptych — contemporary collage and expanded photography, 2026
Forming 2 — visual art on materialization of ideas, 2026
Forming 2 detail — mixed media contemporary artwork, 2026
Forming 3 — expanded photography and collage, 2026
Forming 3 detail — contemporary visual art, 2026
Forming 1 — mixed media artwork, 2026
Forming 1 detail — photography and collage, 2026

Conjunction

2026

Photography, collage, photographic print, plasticization, aluminum base

Part of the Transgression cycle. This stage captures a moment of emergence — when new connections begin to form in place of the former structure. It is a liminal state in which a new configuration of reality has not yet stabilised, yet is already in operation, opening the possibility of an alternative trajectory of becoming.

Conjunction 1 — contemporary visual art on emergence, 2026
Conjunction 2 — mixed media artwork, 2026
Conjunction 3 — contemporary collage, 2026
Conjunction 4 — expanded photography, 2026
Conjunction 5 — visual art on transformation, 2026
Conjunction 6 — mixed media contemporary artwork, 2026
Conjunction 7 — photography and collage, 2026
Conjunction 8 — contemporary visual art, 2026
Conjunction 9 — expanded photography artwork, 2026
Conjunction 10 — mixed media on becoming, 2026

Albedo. Depth of Presence

2026

Photography, AI, collage, photographic print, aluminum base

This series addresses inner depth as a source of knowledge and orientation in the world. It explores a state of inner listening — a moment when attention shifts from external noise to subtle bodily perception, from which clarity emerges.

Albedo. Depth of Presence 1 — contemporary visual art exploring inner depth, 2026
Albedo. Depth of Presence 2 — mixed media on inner listening, 2026
Albedo. Depth of Presence 3 — expanded photography and collage, 2026

Nigredo. Liminal Mirror

2025

AI, photographic print, aluminum base

Reality as a projection of one's inner state. The artist works with textual prompts addressed to AI, where language becomes both a tool for image generation and a mode of interaction with reality. What emerges in the image is directly linked to the formulation of the question: in both life and the digital environment, we receive not an objective answer, but a reflection of our own internal position.

Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 1 — AI-generated contemporary visual art, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 2 — mixed media AI artwork, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 3 — contemporary visual art on inner reflection, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 4 — expanded photography AI, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 5 — digital collage and AI, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 6 — mixed media artwork, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 7 — contemporary visual art, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 8 — visual art on reality and reflection, 2025
Nigredo. Liminal Mirror 9 — expanded photography AI, 2025

Separation

2026

Photography, AI, collage, UV printing on aluminum · 60 × 60 cm (23.62 × 23.62 in)

A moment of rupture and disidentification with the former self. Within the alchemical process, it follows the fracture of wholeness and unfolds as a liminal space between past and future, where the old self dissolves and the new has not yet taken form. This state is both painful and necessary as a condition for transformation.

Separation 1 — contemporary collage on rupture and transformation, 2026
Separation 3 — mixed media on dissolution of self, 2026
Separation 5 — expanded photography and collage, 2026
Separation 7 — contemporary visual art on liminal space, 2026
Separation 9 — mixed media artwork on transformation, 2026

Other Projects

Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky

2025

Digital photography, digital collage, printing on PVC

The inner garden has quieted down and closed its borders to the outside world. A stage of necessary silence in order to grow what needs to be said to the world. To lie low in anticipation of a new cycle with acceptance and trust.

Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 1 — contemporary digital collage on inner silence, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 2 — visual art on cycles of nature, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 3 — expanded photography collage, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 4 — contemporary mixed media, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 5 — visual art on inner garden, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 6 — digital collage and photography, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 7 — contemporary visual art, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 8 — expanded photography artwork, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 9 — mixed media on silence and growth, 2025
Cocoon Under the Moonlit Sky 10 — contemporary collage, 2025

Twinkling

2024

Digital photography, digital collage, photo printing, lamination, aluminium base

Through her artistic practice, the artist strives to achieve wholeness. Her art endlessly seeks a balance between understanding the world and not understanding it. Together with it, she balances in constant oscillation between chaos and calm, oversaturation and silence, clarity and concealment.

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The emergence of works are peaks of awareness that complement her picture of the world. She creates a work — and what emerges in return, recursively, shapes her again. This essence, embodied in form, lays into her foundation, strengthening her ground.

Twinkling — contemporary digital collage on wholeness and chaos, 2024
Twinkling 2 — expanded photography and collage, 2024
Twinkling 3 — mixed media contemporary artwork, 2024
Twinkling 4 — visual art on oscillation and balance, 2024

(I'm)pulse

2024

Digital photography, digital collage, photo printing, lamination, aluminium base

The artist explores the nature of impulses toward creation, examining the subtle inner mechanics through which "something" emerges from emptiness.

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"Where do impulses toward action and creation originate? They resemble primal reflexes — on an intuitive level, you suddenly feel that 'this is necessary.' Without any visible reason, you turn aside, set out on a journey without a final destination, connect incompatible elements, so that in the end 'that very thing' is born — something impossible to imagine in advance. To learn to let go: to let go of the mind, to let go of control, to let thoughts take flight in order to allow growth. Everything that needs to grow will grow — from within you, through you, inevitably finding its way into the world. The main thing is to allow it to happen."

(I'm)pulse — contemporary visual art on creative impulse, 2024
(I'm)pulse 2 — expanded photography collage, 2024
(I'm)pulse 3 — mixed media on emergence from emptiness, 2024
(I'm)pulse 4 — contemporary collage and photography, 2024

Public Art

Portals

2024

Public art objects. Digital photography, digital collage, lenticular print with vario effect

Created within the MMOMA laboratory "Going Out into the City", in collaboration with the Tretyakov Gallery in Samara. By documenting multiple refractions of architectural elements and urban artifacts, the artist examines both the city's identity and her own — identifying which elements of the familiar landscape evoke resonance and mark a reference point where the loop of personal history becomes visible.

Portals 1 — public art object with lenticular print, 2024
Portals 2 — contemporary public art, 2024
Portals 3 — expanded photography in public space, 2024
Portals 4 — mixed media urban artwork, 2024
Portals 5 — contemporary visual art installation, 2024
Portals 6 — digital collage public art, 2024
Portals 7 — urban photography and collage, 2024
Portals 8 — contemporary mixed media, 2024
Portals 9 — public art on city identity, 2024

Archive

Serendipity Photobook

2012–2019

Digital photography. Self-published, 2022. Edition of 10

A long-term documentary project spanning seven years of observing and recording the spontaneous harmonies of everyday life. The work traces the artist's sustained engagement with the external world — light, color, form, and chance encounters — as a source of meaning and interconnectedness.

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The project marks the foundational period of Simakova's practice, establishing documentary photography as a primary language. Images made across years and geographies reveal unexpected correspondences, suggesting an underlying order within apparent randomness. The book was self-published in 2022 in a limited edition of 10 copies.

The photobook was exhibited in 2022 as part of the Young Photographers of Russia finalists' exhibition at the Novosibirsk State Art Museum; Museum Center "Ploshchad Mira", Krasnoyarsk; and Oktava Art Cluster, Tula.

This outward-facing gaze — rooted in the traditions of contemporary documentary photography — underwent a decisive transformation in 2022. The documentary language evolved into digital collage and multilayered composition, while the focus shifted from external observation to the exploration of internal space. Serendipity thus stands as both a self-contained work and a point of origin for the artist's current multidisciplinary practice.

Serendipity Photobook — documentary photography project 2012-2019
Serendipity Photobook 2 — contemporary documentary photography
Serendipity Photobook 3 — expanded photography and light
Serendipity Photobook 4 — visual art on chance encounters
Serendipity Photobook 5 — mixed media documentary
Serendipity Photobook 6 — contemporary photography
Serendipity Photobook 7 — expanded photography artwork
Serendipity Photobook 8 — visual art on everyday harmonies
Serendipity Photobook 9 — mixed media on light and form
Serendipity Photobook 10 — contemporary documentary visual art

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