Anna Khodkova and Kristina Yarosh are a creative duo, the founders of the Etching Room 1 etching workshop, which prints engravings from metal.
This year was very fruitful for girls – exhibitions within the Book Arsenal, Kyiv Art Week, Non-Stop Media IX festival, VOVATANYA Gallery, Contemporary Ukrainian Graphics in Chicago, also It’s NOT the LOUVR gallery bar. Read the interview with Anna Khodkova and Kristina Yarosh below.
What stories draw you in the most?
Kristina Yarosh: Crowded places, urban buildings, and how it all interacts. What surrounds us is filled with people and different buildings – it all affects people.
You have recently returned from Normandy. What did you represent there? What do you remember about this trip?
Anna Khodkova: We were visiting artists at the L’école supérieure d’arts & médias de Caen/Cherbourg Art Institute. They held a workshop in the etching workshop (printing engravings from metal) for students – they showed their own way of printing etchings.
At the end of the workshop, we printed a joint work with nineteen students who chose this workshop. In the first week of classes at the institute, 14 workshops are held, and students from different specialties can choose the one they are interested in and get acquainted with other techniques.
How did they react to your work? Is there a difference in the perception of the work by our public and the French?
Anna Khodkova: In Ukraine, they immediately ask: “What is it? How is it done?” There is no such gap in knowledge in the field of graphic art, so they look more at technique, and plots.
What impressed you the most?
Krystyna Yarosh: We were impressed by the workshops at the institute – this is the absolute opposite of the workshops at Ukrainian institutes. Unfortunately. In France, all workshops are well equipped, there are all materials and equipment, a separate workshop is allocated for each technique (letterpress, silk-screen printing, etching, lithography, etc.), students study for free and can change institutions during their studies because of educational institutions of this kind lot.
And why did you choose graphics among all types of art?
Anna Khodkova: It’s much more interesting for us. We love to spend time designing parts and then putting them together. This is completely different. Now we have a new interest – sculpture in mini-forms, which will complement large graphic works.
What are the main challenges you face in your work?
Kristina Yarosh: There are always many difficulties when it comes to your own engraving workshop: starting from the premises, finding equipment, and ending with the purchase of suitable paper. This is all you have to look for in different parts of the city, and sometimes it even goes beyond the borders of the country, because we do not have special stores where you could go and buy everything you need to get started.
Your work is on various subjects. What was the most unusual in the implementation?
Christina Yarosh: We are always experimenting. We really like how some of our pictures look on the badges we make as a merchandise workshop, as well as stickers, shoppers, and t-shirts. Now we are experimenting with animation.
Please tell us a little about the process of creating your work. How does this happen?
Anna Khodkova: We are engaged in printed graphics. Basically, it is an engraving on copper plates (etching). We print using the intaglio method. This is when the composition is made up of many printing plates, which are sometimes rolled under a printing press dozens of times.
How do you think the space in which you show your work affects the message you give to the public? For example, in a gallery with white walls, it will be one thing, in It’s NOT the LOUVR gallery bar it will be something else. Or does it not matter?
Kristina Yarosh: This is of great importance. We do exhibitions from time to time and when we prepare a project, we already roughly understand how and where we want to see it as a result. That is, first we create a project, and then we think about where to show it. It also happens vice versa when certain galleries offer to exhibit their work. In this case, we select works for a specific location.
That exhibition, which was recently held at It’s NOT the LOUVR gallery bar, is a series of works with a specific theme?
Anna Khodkova: We have collected work from the last six months. They all overlap and complement each other. We have been working for quite a long time on almost one topic, our environment and how we perceive it. These works are not one series but assembled parts from several, but they are quite harmoniously connected with each other within the same theme.
How important is the audience to you?
Anna Khodkova: Perhaps creativity is a bit about selfishness. After all, initially, we do what we want.
