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The High Priestess Vera Kochubey

 

 

 

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Vera Kochubey is a Berlin based artist and mystic originally from Berlin, based in Moscow.

There is a head-on energy in Kochubey’s work, where convulsing masks and contorted eyes stare down their audience. The swirling whorls of her jagged faces are hypnotic, expressing the mix of psychoanalysis and mysticism that makes her work so commanding. Philosophy, mysticism, magic and psychoanalysis all find their space in the towering canvases that Vera paints with broad, definitive brushstrokes. With an impressive litany of academic accomplishments, Vera studied art and psychology, followed by a Masters in Psychoanalysis and Cultural Studies at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, the city she now calls her home. artPLAY’s Katja sits down with Vera to talk tarot, truth, and transcending the human.

Photography by Katja Kat @katjakatphotos. Interview by Katja Kat and by Anna Middleton @annakmid

 

www.verakochubey.com/

@verakochubey/

 

 

 

“Painting is a medium for God to communicate with Humans” Vera Kochubey

 

 

 

 

 

Katja: Your paintings are mysterious, powerful, and full of primal symbolism. Tell us about your ideas on spiritualism, mysticism, and the world beyond what is tangible, and how these are exhibited through your art.

Vera: I started with a BA in Psychology, and in Psychoanalysis and Cultural Studies. I stumbled onto the work of famous psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, and that’s when I had my 180 degree turn, which eventually lead me to study mysticism and symbols (since science didn’t fit into the metaphysical side of things). It was then that I understood that painting was a powerful way for me to express the metaphysical, and coming from a family of painters, I had been painting all my life already.

 

“Through my paintings I am guiding the spectator into a certain world where I live and exist, so that people get to feel it like a void opening for them”

 

This is why my paintings are really psychedelic, and of course, they’re also hopefully affecting the audience on a subconscious level. I think my paintings are powerful because people are always drawn to them.

 

Katja: I mentioned primal symbolism in my question: you have some very powerful symbols that could be connected to collective unconsciousness, if we go back to Jung’s theory. There are kinds of symbols that might trigger something in us on a powerful unconscious level.

Vera:  My paintings are a medium for gods to communicate with humans. It’s like a communication panel: that’s why I use a lot of large head drawings in my paintings to symbolise gods, and how much ‘bigger’ they are than humans. I also write messages in my paintings: “have you figured yourself out”, ect.. I use large scale for the impact, so that the audience has a personal experience when they see my work.

I am a modern mystic. I am mystical in terms of having had experience of connecting to higher realms. Since I have been there it’s hard to connect to the physical world and it’s hard to stay grounded. Most of the time I am in an dissociated trance. It’s a state: a battle between genius and insanity. I feel like I am a bridge; I am a communicator through my art; I am a messenger.

I think my paintings change and raise vibrations. I use recognisable symbols, transcending and directing them into the metaphysical realm. It’s an altered state of consciousness: a drug-type of feeling, but it’s art that can also create an altered state of consciousness. Looking at some of my paintings could put one in an altered state. My painting, “A Vortex of Creation”, is designed with 10 condensed circles: it’s made to vibrate and lure you into another world.

 

Katja:  In relation to mysticism, we would love to hear more about tarot and its role in your art.

Vera: I discovered tarot in Los Angeles, through a really magical person. She introduced me to magic, and since then I started to learn more through books etc., and after three years I have created my own tarot deck. Tarot is a very important system, but it’s a forgotten wisdom. In our days tarot has become diluted and very much misunderstood, and that’s why I have created my own deck.

Tarot for me is a direct communication with the sub-consciousness. Tarot cards represent the 22 universal principles of life (23 if we count 0, the fool). It’s all about numerology: the secret, forgotten numerology. I use a lot of numbers in my paintings and these numbers are there on purpose and connected to tarot. It’s another way of creating an altered state.

 

Katja:  So you’re a modern high priestess, communicating through powerful archetypal symbols from the collective unconsciousness, and Tarot is another way of creating an altered state through your paintings, combining words and numbers and symbols.

Vera: It is my own visual language, which is very recognisable. By combining words, symbols and numbers I have created my own language. I also like to use a lot of psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytical ideas of Carl Jung, as a modern high priestess I know that they should be taught more and recognised more by a broader audience. I am the high priestess of contemporary art.

 

Katja:  You have a controversial personality as a biological woman. You call yourself a ‘trans human’ although it’s not obvious in any physical way, because physically you are associated with a beautiful female form. So we would like to know about this gender fluid culture and how you perceive traditional gender roles and sexuality.

Vera: I like to confront and provoke: I have paintings that say “how gay are you today”. I believe that sexuality is a spectrum so you can be gay 100% or 1%, so I feel that everybody could be gay.

This all has roots in mystical research. The main goal of those mysteries is to attain a certain mindset, which is unification with god. You are transcending together with god, having the sacred marriage of yourself and your higher-self, the so called “secret hermaphrodite”, who is androgynous. And I have always felt like this kind of androgynous person, even before I knew what it really meant. So for me it was like I was not a woman and not a man, and then I had to be a woman of course and I was revolted by this, I was in a rage because I had to choose.

 

Katja: But we are bound into this body and into physical existence, and this body is bound to a gender for biological reasons, but then you realise there is something beyond that?

Vera: Yes, I use a lot of male principles in my life, which are taking action and taking risks, making your own statements, leaving a heritage and leaving your mark on the world. Female principles (as opposed) are principles of commitment, and growth, and receptivity: accepting things, which I also implement.

I had a problem before with accepting this, as there was a moment in my life where I was sure I was a man, and that I was suffering and wouldn’t be happy. So I did a huge amount of research on trans operations and transgender options and nothing was satisfying enough for me. I though every option was just bad. I felt it was a corruption of my body on chemical, physical and emotional levels. One of my principles is treating your body as sacred, and so many people don’t treat their body and genitals as sacred. There is a lack of information and a lot of misleading information in this field.

 

“I am the high priestess of contemporary art”

 

Katja: Yes, regarding questions of gender and sexuality, these topics are so misunderstood and so much is misleading. There is a lot of untruth connected to those issues.

Vera: Yes there is a lot of misleading information regarding transgender questions. Mo doctor is ever going to tell you it’s impossible to really become a woman when you are a man and vice versa. But I know that because of polarities, because of the energy field, it’s something astral, your astral body – you can’t change it, you can’t change your vibration from minus to plus.

I have been suffering from this problem of gender but I didn’t do anything to my body. Because you need to treat your body as your sacred gift. You can be anything you want, be queer, you can be a drag queen, but your body is sacred.

 

“I consider myself as psychologically non–binary. I had a lot of issues with my body, but now I accept it and I am fine. This is what universe wants us to achieve through psychological, soulful transformation”

 

Katja:  If we were to describe your paintings in only a few words, the first word that comes to mind is “magic”. Tell us more…

Vera:  I would say portals and communicative media… communication with gods… translating something from above to here: a bridge. I think it sounds crazy, but I’m not sorry. There’s a quotation from Charles Bukowsky : “when you are an artist you are alone with the gods”, and this is my point. I am alone with the gods, so physical realm for me is more like a necessity. I am detached from the material world, so I have to come back every time.

 

Katja:  Although, as you say, you are “alone with gods”, you are also with us, and it’s very fortunate for us to have people like you with a powerful vision, who also at the same time can communicate and share that vision. But you have a purpose, otherwise you wouldn’t be here in this material body, and you still have things to learn.

Vera:  Absolutely I do, and for now I am happy. Art is a language of culture and I want to bring that culture forward, to bring forward cultural insights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I don’t need a mirror I have a third eye” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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