ARINA ORLOVA

Arina’s practice examines modern mythology, the icons, archetypes and cinematic narratives that structure contemporary imagination. Working across paintings and prints in acrylic and 23K gold leaf, she recasts film characters as contemporary icons, adopting the visual language of devotional painting to question how popular culture constructs and elevates its heroes and heroines.

Recent series, Open Doors, Doppelgängers and Kills & Kisses, approach this inquiry through shifting lenses of identity and power. In Open Doors, Elizabeth Taylor’s heroines stand at literal and psychological doorways, exposing the gap between social façade and private truth. Doppelgängers, informed by Lynch and Hitchcock, fractures the figure into mirrored selves, exploring projection, desire, and the instability of identity. Kills & Kisses presents Bond Girls as gilded, faceless archetypes, interrogating glamour, disposability, and the shifting ideal of femininity.

Across the work, gold functions as both halo and constraint – a symbol of spectacle, reverence, and entrapment.