SOULLAND
MEETS
SLAVA VORONTSOV
SOULLAND MEETS
SLAVA VORONTSOV
PUBLISHED
THU, 20 MAR 2025
5 MIN READ
I first heard about Slava through my friend Jesper Lund, who had visited his studio in Paris. Jesper connected us, and after a short DM exchange with Slava, he sent me an address. We met on the street, where Slava was waiting for us. He walked us through the streets of Paris and up to his studio, just a few hundred meters from Notre-Dame.
We spent the afternoon looking through his paintings and drawings. Slava showed us videos from his years as a rapper and let us go through his scrapbooks, filled with drawings, fragments, images, and references.
Among the things we found where several drawings that stayed with us. We ended up selecting a few of them and turning them into prints for our AW26 collection. It felt like a very natural connection. Something that had started as a studio visit became a collaboration.
Slava was born in Tazovsky, a remote village above the Arctic Circle in northern Russia and comes from a family of artists. His path has taken him through academic art, graffiti, tattooing, and music, including a bunch of solo albums, before painting became his main form of expression.
After leaving Russia in 2023, he settled in France and completed his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2025.
Today, his paintings move between abstraction, expressionism, and figuration. They are physical, raw, and sometimes chaotic, but there is also a strong sense of control underneath them. Religious symbols, the body, mythology, violence, and the unconscious appear alongside each other, often creating tension rather than harmony.
When we first met, you showed us your studio, your paintings, your music videos and your scrapbooks. You have moved through so many different creative forms: academic art, graffiti, tattooing, music and now painting. Do you see all of these as different chapters, or as one continuous creative practice?
Different chapters of one book. Im happy to have different experiences and to me its kind of how you learn life and I love to learn. Its the precious that nobody can’t take from me. And I also believe that it was always leading the same path and no matter what medium I was ever using it was still about being emotional and creating some form out of it. An endless experimental process.
You have said that leaving Russia changed your artistic language from something more verbal towards something visual. What happens to an artist when the language they used to express themselves is suddenly no longer available in the same way?
It's like you’ve lost your super power. You was sharping your blade and practicing exercises for years training hard for decades and once of a sudden its all gone. But it also sets you free somehow. What a frightening and exciting feeling. Even I think that painting is more of a universal language than music.
Do you miss making music?
I can still do music but it just doesn’t feel the same. Everything has changed. I mean not only I don’t have my friends my co partners around but the whole feeling of a presence. But im not sure if I miss it maybe like once a year. And to me just music in general looks so little comparing to visual art as a medium. Like visual art is so timeless. And im not really happy about the music industry current state. I know there are also a lot of problems in the art industry but as a visual artist you might have so much more of autonomy, privacy and intimacy comparing to music industry.
And I enjoy the tactile nature of painting. It’s such a medieval medium in a way — applying paint to canvas and creating a physical object as the final result. I find this incredibly fascinating.
Do you still think like a musician when you paint? Do you think in rhythm, repetition, silence or noise?
Yeah there are always a rhythm its natural from the breathing to your pulse. And I do compare abstract paintings a lot to classic music. Like a puzzle of millions of parts that becomes a perfect picture when it comes together in a right way. And every piece is very subtle and when you put all this different patterns and tones in a right way together it makes you and other people happy. And different types of abstraction paintings might also be compared to different musical patterns.
When you start a painting, do you know what it is going to become?
Really depends because painting is a skill so you already have some trust for your body and your ideas. But I’m always curious for experiments like trying new things which makes a result sometimes unexpected in a way. And I have a natural behavior of breaking the rules even I just made my own rule I immediately wanna break it which makes my practice very unstable probably. Still I’m always looking for an aesthetic shock as a result.
What was the first thing you ever drew?
When I was a kid I was a huge fan of Ninja Mutant Turtles carton series from early 90s so I had a whole notebook with drawings of every ninja turtle character and all of heir accessories armors and stuff I believe I still remember how to draw them!
Not sure if it were my first drawings but its definitely a first vibrant memory of myself creating series of drawings repetitively.
You grew up above the Arctic Circle and now live in Paris. How much of the place you come from is still inside your work?
I was born in Siberia and grew up mostly in Moscow region where winter still lasts for 6 months. I guess I have much love for the dirty white color from those winter snowy and muddy landscapes. But truly can’t say how much it influences my work right now even my work consists of all of the different experiences I had but still I live in the present where are so many different inspiring visuals. So I guess in some way its a multi layered reality that im trying to bring into my paintings. And maybe its not even a visual aspect but something more specific but its hard to describe it from my own point of view.
You left Russia in 2023. Has leaving changed your relationship with the place you came from?
It's still hard to believe all this shit is happening everyday for the fifth year its crazy. I felt derealized for a long period and still feel like it from time to time. So yes and no. Its called an inner immigration when you live in one place but all the things you read learn and watch comes from a different place so you are mentally living there in a different reality. That’s what I had for many years living in Moscow. And now with all the tragedy happening me being here I don’t feel like I belong to its present now after almost 5 years of leaving the country. But I still feel connected to classic literature and classic composers and painters especially so many of them had a similar path as mine with immigration.
Do you feel like the same person you were before you left?
It's like some sort of an experiment that I’m doing with myself. The research of how the community influences and transforms you and I can say the environment definitely changes you. Im not even talking about how it shapes you mentally and spiritually. I don’t believe in ethnicities or races like you might have a different experience from others living in the same society. But I also believe you become more of yourself in the right environment for you and I feel like im in a right one now.
Did religion play a role in your childhood, and has your relationship with it changed over time?
I don’t trust any corporation so I can’t stand any institutional religion and people going insane about it. But I still have love for the religious mythology and visual history especially iconography. So its more of a poetic side of religion to me that was ever touching me. I can’t say I grew up deeply religious more like following the orthodox tradition with all the rituals. And I was always fascinated by the Orthodox Churches’ altars and now Im really moved by the Italian churches and its architecture.
You often bring religious symbols and imagery into your work, but they rarely feel comforting or devotional. They almost become disturbing elements, colliding with the body, violence, sexuality and more primitive imagery. What interests you about putting these things next to each other?
I think its very natural for a human being. Like I believe everything man made is art. And religion is very close to art in a way of creating a mythology and
attributing value to immaterial objects that have no intrinsic value as such. But does religious symbols disturbs me? A lot. Like a suffering man nailed to a cross going through a torture bleeding is a wild thing. Basically I believe art is what makes us different from animals. All other parts of our human behavior is pretty animalistic. So to me I would say its a research of who we are, learning others and myself through this contradictory.
There is a lot of tension between the sacred and the profane in your work. Why do you think you are drawn to putting those two worlds against each other?
I like the contradictory in general and to me both of this worlds are merging into each other the spiritual and the scatologic ones. I have a note in my sketchbook that describes my vision which is sexuality and spirituality.
When you put a religious symbol into a painting, do you think about its meaning, or does it become something else once it enters your world?
I would say I use symbols more like a reference or an homage but its already a very strong and powerful visual image. And Im creating my own symbols through the lines and patterns. Still I believe in the self interpretation so people are still gonna see what they want to see.
What are you curious about right now?
Is the evil gonna win?
What makes you angry?
That we still live in the dark ages with some new crazy digital weapons. We made some ethical progress but still in the process. And accepting the pain that is happening in the world everyday is a challenge sometimes. So it helps me in someway to sublime this energy I hope.
What makes you happy?
Creating a painting or a drawing. Like to me its a trace of my own existence. I’m dead if im not creating.
But in my everyday life things like love like nature, family time, animals are making me happy. Its pretty simple I guess but these are the most natural things to me. Like I’m trying to use less digital devices and more analogue and it makes me happy.
What are you listening to when you paint?
I have a CD player from the 90s that I found in the streets without a cord that plays radio France classique pretty much all the time when I paint. So its random classic music. And I have a cd collection that includes Nirvana Bleach album, Tchaikovsky Swan Lake, Rachmaninoff, Sade, Debussy, Ravel and so on. Some random stuff like Paul the Pope of Rome Messe recording in latin language.
What do you do when you are not making art?
Thinking about art. I mean its like a focus on everything you see daily and observing life in general and in details and enjoying it. Like starring in the sky. Its some sort of a puzzle you have in your head and the key is everywhere.
What are you listening to when you paint?
I have a CD player from the 90s that I found in the streets without a cord that plays radio France classique pretty much all the time when I paint. So its random classic music. And I have a cd collection that includes Nirvana Bleach album, Tchaikovsky Swan Lake, Rachmaninoff, Sade, Debussy, Ravel and so on. Some random stuff like Paul the Pope of Rome Messe recording in latin language.
What are you still trying to understand?
Are we the conscious of the universe? Like if we are the only alive beings in the universe so what our conscious is? An illusion?
You have already lived several different creative lives. What do you think you are still searching for?
Creating a chef-d’oeuvre, a masterpiece.
Are you closer to finding it?
I believe so and I’m enjoying the journey and trusting the process.
Anything you want to say?
Love is free!