“My style lives between surrealism and emotional realism. I explore identity, transformation, and the fragile balance between the visible and the invisible.”
Between Scissors and Sound: An Artistry Built on Intuition
Artistic expression often begins in the quiet moments, and for London-based artist Natalia Alekna, silence is not the absence of sound but the beginning of vision. Through a distinctive practice that merges hand-cut collage and ambient vocal music, Natalia constructs emotionally resonant worlds where voice and image speak in harmony. Her work is neither strictly visual nor entirely sonic; instead, it resides in the interplay of the two, revealing emotional truths through layered textures and tonal subtleties. What emerges is a deeply intimate form of storytelling that invites introspection and sensory pause.
Natalia’s early fascination with image and sound was less about technique and more about emotion—how a composition, whether visual or auditory, could hold feeling without needing to articulate it directly. Growing up in an environment steeped in both visual art and music, she developed an attunement to the rhythms embedded in everyday life. Faces, silences, and even the discarded remnants of magazines became part of a visual language that paralleled the harmonics of her vocal explorations. These beginnings now shape a multidisciplinary approach defined by sensitivity, balance, and an appreciation for fragments that others might overlook.
The core of Natalia’s practice lies in finding rhythm across mediums. Whether slicing paper or layering vocal harmonies, she approaches each with an instinctive awareness of emotion and composition. Her work does not seek to impose meaning, but to uncover it—allowing materials to guide her toward visual or sonic cohesion. In doing so, she constructs a bridge between the tactile and the intangible, using simple tools like scissors, voice, and silence to reflect complex states of being. Her creative philosophy challenges the distinction between seeing and hearing, proposing instead that art begins where the two converge.
Natalia Alekna: Composing Emotion Through Cut and Chorus
What began as a meditative form of play has evolved into an art practice rooted in emotional complexity and surrealist nuance. Natalia’s signature aesthetic draws from both emotional realism and abstraction, bringing together disparate fragments to form narratives that feel as familiar as they are otherworldly. Her hand-cut collages are populated by stylized figures: muses, goddesses, performers, each marked by bold silhouettes, delicate facial features, and symbolic accessories. These characters become vehicles for broader questions around transformation, identity, and perception, while also echoing theatrical and mythological themes.
Her compositions often repurpose fashion magazine imagery, transforming mass-produced visuals into poetic expressions of inner life. Faces are reconstructed into constellations, limbs become intertwined with botanical motifs, and dislocated features form enigmatic visages. These visual strategies speak to an interest in duality and multiplicity—how beauty, selfhood, and meaning are rarely singular. Natalia’s work resonates with the experimental spirit of early modernist collage, yet it carries a distinctly contemporary pulse, informed by feminist iconography, editorial aesthetics, and a deep engagement with silence as both medium and metaphor.
One of Natalia’s most cherished pieces—a collage that entwines fragmented faces with floral elements—captures this interplay of brokenness and regeneration. Created entirely from magazine clippings, the piece reflects on rebirth and the quiet beauty that can emerge from disassembly. For Natalia, each fragment she selected felt like a voice, contributing to a collective whisper that guided her toward emotional wholeness. This artwork, both visually intricate and symbolically rich, exemplifies her broader approach: using what has been discarded to construct something not only new, but deeply human.
The Beauty of Fracture and the Whisper of Form
Natalia’s fascination with contrast—strength and vulnerability, presence and absence, sound and silence—underpins much of her artistic vision. These oppositions are not treated as contradictions but as complementary forces that reveal deeper emotional truths. Her work resists clarity in favor of resonance, often leaning into ambiguity to create space for the viewer’s interpretation. The result is an artistic language that feels both intimate and open-ended, inviting a form of emotional listening that extends beyond the surface of image or sound.
Influences in her work span from the spiritual abstraction of Hilma af Klint to the innovation of contemporary collage artists pushing analog techniques into new psychological territory. Yet perhaps the most significant influence in her creative life is silence itself. Rather than viewing silence as emptiness, Natalia treats it as a generative force—an essential part of her process that shapes the rhythm and texture of both her collages and her musical compositions. This deep listening allows her to approach creation not with a predetermined goal, but with attentiveness to what emerges.
In her studio practice, there is no rigid schedule, only a devotion to attentiveness. On some days, she immerses herself in paper, scissors, and the tactile act of cutting. On others, she layers vocals into delicate harmonies that hover between meditation and melody. Her upcoming project—a visual-vocal installation—aims to bring these two facets together in a unified experience. Viewers will be invited not just to observe, but to listen inwardly, engaging with the work on multiple sensory levels. This immersive format reflects her core philosophy: that art, like emotion, is felt in layers.
Natalia Alekna: Where the Visible and the Unspoken Meet
Natalia’s distinctive use of fragmentation as a technique and motif marks one of the most compelling aspects of her visual language. By breaking down and reassembling faces, bodies, and textures, she constructs figures that embody multiple identities or emotional states simultaneously. Eyes appear where mouths might be, hands cradle blooming flowers or ambiguous objects, and facial features are intentionally misaligned, all to reflect the layered nature of human experience. These choices challenge traditional ideals of beauty and offer an invitation to see the self as fluid, evolving, and multifaceted.
Text plays a subtle yet powerful role in her compositions. Snippets lifted from fashion editorials or advertisements are transformed into garments, thoughts, or textures, adding a linguistic rhythm to her images. Words become part of the visual structure, not for direct reading but for emotional tone. This integration of text deepens the narrative potential of her work, blurring the line between language and image. In this way, her collages not only express stories but suggest unspoken ones, shaped as much by omission as by inclusion.
While Natalia’s artistic process remains rooted in analog practices, her vision aligns with a broader movement of contemporary artists reclaiming traditional collage for psychological depth and introspective storytelling. Her compositions are not nostalgic but present-focused, offering a fresh interpretation of surrealism that prioritizes emotional clarity within visual ambiguity. Whether experienced through her collages or ambient vocal works, Natalia’s art exists in a space of quiet intensity, inviting the viewer to pause, reflect, and listen more deeply—not just to the work itself, but to their own inner landscapes.
