ARTIST STATEMENT .

Liliya Zhilina, visual artist, specialising in art-fashion photography and film.
In her works, Liliya explores questions about identity, self-acceptance and complexity of human emotions.
Her artistic philosophy she describes as “feeling in silence”.
Through her works Liliya engages with an audience and awake one's consciousness not using words, but feelings that come with half-forgotten memories and moments in life.

"Feeling is a sensation we experience with a touch: both physical and spiritual.
As a visual artist, I do not just see this world; i feel it.
I create memories through emotional connection with everything that surrounds me.
I narrate these intimate moments in photographs
through metaphors and symbols, telling stories in feelings.
I explore the complexity of human emotions, and how it influences the opinion, we form about ourselves.
With my works, I hope to engage viewers in a silent conversation with themselves, during which they would come to accept themselves as they are, with everything they are feeling."

Liliya works with both digital and analog photography gear, and introduces mixed media techniques into her projects.
She says that film photography as well as traditional art medias create this «visual diary» feeling, making her works more intimate.

BIOGRAPHY .

Liliya Zhilina was born in 1995 in Moscow.
After completing 9th grade, she moved to Cyprus, where she completed secondary education at a British school and a Bachelor degreed at UCLan university in Business Administration major, focusing on business aspects such as marketing, finance, HR, and business operations in Europe.
In 2016, she returned to Moscow upon receiving a job offer from a subsidiary of the German company named Dohler.

Liliya began her creative journey in 2010 at a British school, while enrolling in art studies alongside her initial business major.
Working primarily with traditional artistic media (oils, watercolours, pastels, sculpture and ceramics), Liliya began exploring alternative methods of artistic expression, which led her to photography.
An internship at Cyprus Fashion Weeks further built upon her desire to work primarily with fashion photography.
Combining traditional and analog processes inherent in traditional art media with photography allowed Lilia to develop an emotional aesthetic and «diary-like» visuals, with further exploration of both sides of photography: digital and analog.

Currently Liliya is a special prise grant winner of the Still Art Foundation 2024, member of Blueprint 100, year 2025, and has exhibited at venues such as PAF and MAMM.
The MAMM exhibition project is currently stored in the museum's archives.
Liliya’s editorial-style projects have been published in various international magazines.