Five Minutes With Mila Furstova
1. Can you tell us a little about the process behind making the installation for The Queen Charlotte Maternity Hospital?
This project was a great test for me as I went into an absolute unknown in terms of translating the medium of etching into architectural scale. Etching is a 15th-century printmaking technique but I feel that it has much scope in contemporary art. I work on a zinc plate which I cover with a thin layer of hot wax. When the wax cools down, I smoke the surface with a candle to blacken the wax. After, I use a needle to gently draw lines through the wax. Once I build up a drawing typically over several weeks, I submerge the plate into nitric acid which bites all the drawn lines. After about 20 min the lines are etched into the plate and the wax can be washed off. At this stage, the plate is ready for printing onto a wet paper. I always try to be inventive in the way that I wipe the plate so each time I print I can get different results. This way the artwork is a result of a dialogue between me and the process.
2. As part of your practice, you seem to have a strong commitment to supporting charity. Is there anything in particular that has inspired this?
I will never forget that when I was starting as a young student, it always took the kindness of people around me who stopped and devoted some of their time to looking at my art. Gradually people would buy small pieces from me. Hopefully, they did it because they wanted to live with my art but I always saw it as an act of support too. This is why I feel strongly that as an artist I need to pass on that kindness that was given to me. I feel very lucky that I have now been in the position that my art has made hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities over the years. I rejoice at the fact that art can have this power.
3. You mention that your work is influenced by personal and universal mythologies, is there a particular philosophy that underpins your commitment to these inspirations?
I strongly believe that art needs to be honest, it should be somehow naked. Good art can’t follow trends, it needs to come out in sync with the artist’s heartbeat. If it is not felt deeply, it is not good art. An interesting thing is that people recognise it if something doesn’t ring true. As I was finding my path as a young artist, hoping to make art about the big things in the world, through consistent work, the path actually found me. I realised I don’t need to search for great deserving subjects for my art, I can just make art about small everyday things, art about myself. This way my art becomes universal.
4. When you say the process of etching is alchemical, does this apply to the technical process alone?
It is the technical process that feeds the creative and the intellectual. It is because creating etchings and printing them is so unpredictable in its outcome, it keeps the element of curiosity very strong. For me, curiosity is the engine of artistic innovation. My works are very detailed and I get often asked if I am very patient. I am tempted to pose as a patient person 🙂 … but the opposite is the truth. I am as impatient as a curious child. What drives me to draw for weeks on end with my needle on a blackened surface of a metal plate is the pulsing wonder of what will appear at the end of it. I absolutely don’t know when I start the journey and I just want to listen to the Universe and find out…
5. Your work holds a deeply poetic quality, do you think this is an aspect somehow missing in daily life?
I feel that daily life is full of poetry. We have all been born into the middle of this miracle (or perhaps an artwork? ) that the World is. It is more about our capacity to see it. The world has become quite loud with the information and imagery we are bombarded by from various media. I feel this is ok in measure but I believe strongly that it is important to stop and see the simple things, it is important to be bored, to be still and truly taste and digest the beauty of the world. The poetry of daily life comes just from realising that we are a part of a miracle….and that our time is limited.