Contents
1. Introduction
2. How I Discovered Synesthesia
3. Manifestation of Synesthesia a. Past b. Present
4. Being Different
5. Conclusions
1. Introduction
For discussing a potential project, my acquaintance chose a chocolate café in Frankfurt. I'm not fond of sweets and would prefer a tomato over a candy, so I thought I would be sipping coffee throughout our meeting. However, my acquaintance suggested we order hot chocolate and asked for various types of sugar to go with it. The idea of such a mix of sweetness made me uneasy. This unusual presentation intrigued me, and my acquaintance assured me that the chocolate would be served without any additives.
They brought us elegantly presented small cups of brown chocolate and several varieties of pink, red, and orange sugar on the table. The aroma was that of regular chocolate. I took a sip, and a smooth, soft wave of purple color washed over me from my head. It lasted only a fraction of a second, and the entire sensation of bitter chocolate in my mouth was painted in a purple hue across my whole body. I didn't mention this to my companion, but the surprise of such a burst of reaction to the taste amazed me, serving as an unexpected fireworks display of emotions I hadn't anticipated. It was like expecting an economy-class flight from Moscow to Shanghai and being unexpectedly upgraded to first class. The circumstances and the result are the same, but the method of achieving and spending those nine hours is entirely different.
2. How I Discovered Synaesthesia
I stumbled upon synaesthesia quite by chance when I was already thirty-seven. It was during the COVID period, with travel restrictions and closed borders making it impossible to simply visit my parents in Moscow. I missed them terribly. I longed for my mother's warm hugs, joking with my sister, our family home, familiar and beloved streets, friends, and the dynamic city's atmosphere. I was haunted by a red sensation. It was very strong and large - voluminous, this colour overflowed and begged to be released. It's strange to explain, but as a psychologist friend recently told me, intense emotions need an outlet or release from the body. This is perhaps the closest explanation that accurately describes my condition.
During this time, it was also one of the most intense periods in my creative practice. I was continuing my remote studies at an institute in the United Kingdom and experimenting a lot. My tutor noticed that I was not only focused on colour but also exploring ways to bring colour into three dimensions and separate it from the material. Initially, I did this by dyeing various materials and stepping out of the flat surface.
Experiments with color, 2018
Experiments with color and shape, 2020
But I found a solution quite by accident while experimenting with paper. By directly applying paint to a sheet and then modelling it, I achieved volume and air - this is how I began working on a wall composition in red. The process of transferring the red feeling into a physical embodiment led me to Kandinsky and his perception of music, and then to the concept and types of synaesthesia. This is how I learned that my colour sensations from emotions, sometimes food, music, smell, sex, as well as seeing people's auras, are called Synaesthesia.
Working on the red triptych, 2021
Throughout this essay, I will indicate the years of my works and photographs to track how my attitude towards synaesthesia and working with it changed before and after becoming familiar with this term.
3. Reinterpreting the Past
What changed when I discovered that my condition was called Synaesthesia? Several things - the first being a reinterpretation of the past, my emotional manifestations, and how I reacted to them; and second, how I perceive and work with synaesthesia today.
A. The Past
Reflecting now on the first strange sensation of colour I remember brings me back to the events of those days.
1996 year
I was very fond of a boy from the neighbouring building. But, as is typical in childhood, that was the extent of it - except for my emotions. I vividly remember that purple colour. It appeared suddenly and filled my body, creating a desire to release it. So, I took some gouache and paper and started painting, something I had never done before. Drawing a parallel with my red triptych seems odd, but it was the same desire - to be overwhelmed by colour and then freed from it.
I recall feeling joy and happiness while painting. My eyes saw the blend of blue and red, and the sensation of the rough brush on paper, the sound, and the movement of my hand intensified the colour in my head. The drawing had a precise figure, but in reality, it was a living stream of swirling colour with feathers of orange. It was a single, airy, and changing mass. It's worth noting that only now, delving into this analysis, do I realize that it was not just colour but also shapes. I don’t remember any black lines, but I do remember when they were present - that was during a later romantic incident.
The next event occurred during my Wushu training, between 1997 and 2000. In a large group, we sat on the floor in kimonos, preparing for some specific work. At that time, I didn't quite understand what we were doing; our coach just asked us to prepare materials for this practice - coloured sheets of paper, a black dot on a white background, and a white one on black. We looked at these variations of forms and colours, relaxed our vision and bodies, then closed our eyes with a blindfold and continued to look through it. Light flashes appeared after closing my eyes, but it was impossible to trace any movement or objects. But at one point, we started practising seeing our partner’s aura. We had to look with a soft gaze at a person’s forehead, and they began to glow. The coach also mentioned that books have auras, and the brighter and larger the aura, the better the book; books with bad energy would have a small aura. Everything and everyone glowed for me. I thought, "Now I understand why all the saints in icons are depicted with glowing halos. That’s why! The artist sees it and paints it." I also thought that if you look closely, everyone has an aura; maybe everyone is a saint, they just don’t know it.
Later, I learned that it is possible to train oneself to see such a glow and there are techniques to develop this dispersed vision. I can't say if this is an innate skill or not, but in any case, my approach to people changed from that moment. I began to perceive everything better… Now I connect this with my cultural environment and a skill that coincided with a religious fact (icons).
Around 2012, I experienced emotional turmoil related to personal relationships. There were a lot of nerves, tears, and breakups. I was also haunted by a purple colour, but it was impure and murky. There were lines and figures. I drew this state, and when later compared it with a drawing of a migraine (2018), I saw many similarities. Black and red broken lines, sharp ends, and fractures.
Headache, 2018
It is worth noting that now, returning to these works, I see how my attitude towards colour has changed.
Migraine, 2024
For instance, my work from 2024 about headaches still contains black broken lines, but the red has become more complex and richer. It is also important to note that this is no longer a flat piece but a sculpture, where materials play a significant role - black, broken metal. Since my migraines are often linked to my monthly cycle, perhaps this metal element is somehow connected to the iron levels in my blood. I've suffered from iron deficiency anaemia since I was 15 and still take iron supplements monthly. Maybe this surplus or deficiency of this vitamin influences my imagination during migraines and transforms first into images, then into artworks.
My relationship with iron deficiency anaemia and sensations continued further, for example, during a financial product training session in 2013, I periodically felt unwell. I would lose track of my narrative and forget the thread of my presentation. Now, I attribute this to low iron levels in my blood and a lack of oxygen in my brain. But on that day, in a closed room before a large audience, I would slip into a white void. There was a faint ringing in my ears, and the world receded, becoming unimportant and muted. These were seconds for my colleagues, but for me, it was a slow, bright veil of space.
These feelings and sensations from the place reminded me of another incident. Around 2014/15, I attended a new production of “The Seagull” by theatre director Konstantin Bogomolov, starring famous Russian actor Oleg Tabakov. I remember a brown state and the smell and sensation. It’s hard to understand now whether this was a state during the play or an emotion that formed afterwards. But to this day, that colour resembles the brown of chocolate, though more like bitter chocolate - there was a feeling of sandy, dry, dusty, brown colour.
The taste sensations are pure delight for me and remain in my memory for a long time, if not forever. Once in a restaurant in Shanghai around 2017/18, we were offered various tapas - small combinations of food meant to be eaten in one bite. I chose something, put it in my mouth, and as I bit into it, a mass oozed out, and a purple taste appeared. The colour shimmered and vibrated, changing shades slightly from pink to orange, but the essence of the colour remained purple. It's always a split second, but it's like the sensation fills the brain, like food fills the stomach. In this case, the texture was velvety and soft. If it had ends, they would be rounded, they weren't there, but I knew about them. Like mercury flowing from place to place, the violet filled the whole body in a slow moment. Now, it seems to me that this colour surged from the back of my head and spread through my body. In late 2021, I recreated this colour.
Another state I vividly remember, which occurred like all the processes described above, before I learned about synaesthesia, was in 2018 during our first attempt at in vitro fertilization (IVF). After over six years of unsuccessfully trying to conceive naturally, we decided to take this step. And nothing came of it. I felt not only my swollen body from the hormones but also a sense of hopelessness, emotional decline, nature's injustice, and pain.
2018 year
I remember a gnawing sensation in my chest. I wanted to cry, but there were no tears, and there was a desire to pull everything out and distance myself from it. The red itched and grumbled. It was complex as a colour and as a situation.
It felt like there was no clear yes or no answer. My body was nervous and trembling inside, itching. It was a multi-layered state where nothing was simple, and everything was interconnected—that’s the kind of red it was.
In contrast, unhappiness and happiness are not far away.
Happiness, 2021
While writing this paper, I realized that I created the artwork "Happiness" before I discovered the concept of synaesthesia. It is interesting to note that in moments of joy, happiness, or something pleasant, I feel a pink-purple colour.
Then came 2021, and with it an analysis of my state and relationship with colour and sensations. It became clear that I needed to distinctly separate sensations from what I reproduced for the public. Because in reality, it will always be something different from what’s inside the body, and this experience will remain solely mine. What exactly should be shown to the audience and why? For instance, when analysing the colour red in my artistic practise, there have been many attempts to depict a pure and my correct colour.
Krasa (Beauty), 2017
The work "Krasa (Beauty)" might have been my first attempt to metaphorically represent the red in my head by applying paint to a body, though not my own.
2019 year
In a 2019 piece, I hammered nails and tried to draw out the nerves of red lines from the flat surface.
2020 year
In a 2020 piece, I explored how to penetrate the essence of material to its core, where colour is formed. In each of these works, viewers would interpret and associate them differently. Hammering nails or chiselling the surface are practically aggressive actions towards the material, which will be perceived by the viewer. Yet my sensation of red, although triggered by a complex of not-always-positive emotions, was still a large, all-encompassing state of home, stability, something permanent, familiar.
Homeland, 2021 year
I began the work “Homeland” as a triptych, rationally referring to the Russian icon, but unconsciously I wanted to depict the complex red colour of my emotion. In the paper technique, I understood what I was looking for and what dissatisfied me in my previous physical works about the colour red. They were stable and unchanging. In the paper technique, the red colour vibrates and continuously changes depending on the room's lighting. This work rustles; the colour has the sound of movement, it is both light and heavy at the same time. Sometimes, rationally, I think that red is the inner colour of our body. Blood and flesh. It’s the first colour we might perceive when we are in the womb, feeling protected and pulsing. Later, an acquaintance noted that these works absorb sound. If you get close and listen, you can hear silence. Since I hadn’t noticed this, the first time I heard this silence, I couldn’t help but think it was the correct sound for this work.
B. Present
After realizing and accepting the state of colour as something unusual or quite unpopular, I began to collect these states and emotions, translating them into physical colour and analysing them. The colour of the aura is always a cold, shimmering light tone. It can always be seen. This glow grows from a person or object and varies in size.
Material Emotions. Portrait of a Person, 2021
The most productive time for me is the moment when I'm falling asleep. During this period, a true flight of forms and colours occurs. This might be due to my daily work, as I note a pattern between the intensity of my day and the images I see at night. For example, if I’ve worked a lot with colour or was searching for a form in my studio, I will definitely see combinations of flying figures or whimsical compositions, which I try to sketch, though I can’t always physically wake up at that moment.
Moreover, a revelation for me was seeing forms and colours during sex. Sometimes, it is very distracting because the colour fills the entire body and becomes large, absorbing, beautiful, and pleasant, while the forms quickly change, making it fascinating to watch. Usually, the colour’s smooth and soft forms begin to "fly" directly during the process. They seem to grow out of the darkness and fill the entire body. Only a few times have these colours appeared at the moment of culmination, and it was particularly fascinating. At the key moment, a strong wave rolled from the centre of the abdomen along the ribs and down the spine, breaking through the skin like spider legs and growing out like wings. At other times, the colours were especially vivid, emotionally being turquoise-blue, and another time pink-purple. Beautiful!
I must also note the state I’ve been in since the beginning of the war in February 2022. As I can understand now, colour on emotions often arises with their accumulation. That is, it’s as if they need to gather together, or I try to first take control of my emotions and think everything over.
From February, I only cried, and then I began to feel the blackness. It developed from within my abdomen. This was a prolonged state - about a year - because I didn’t immediately realize that my whole family in Moscow was justifying the war in Ukraine. Everything worsened when, at my 8th week of pregnancy, the foetus stopped developing. Meanwhile, my mother continued to insist that in Bucha and Mariupol, the Russians weren’t killing anyone. It was surreal: my desire to give new life and my parents' desire to destroy all lives.
The suddenly collapsed reality - the loss of the parents I knew and the fact that I wouldn’t have children - plunged me into darkness and murk (an unpleasant state that I wanted to wash off). It was more like a state in which you constantly reside, one you can’t exit, with a body dark from the inside. I just wanted my kind and wonderful mother back, to hug me and say that everything would be okay.
Since a psychologist couldn’t help me, I began using my professional activity to analyse what was happening. To the extent that I manage it now, rational thinking takes control over a person. An artfully constructed propaganda system can instil any idea so convincingly that one can think it is their own thought and opinion. But this raises a question for me: to what extent can one manipulate opinions and shape the views of another? Is there something in a person that is purely their personal perception of this world, their values, and beliefs? For me, my vision of colour, forms, and aura is my personal feeling, something that no one can influence. These are my beliefs and values, guidelines in this world. These are affective, unconscious, truthful reactions to the events of the surrounding world. Does my father have them? How can I reach them, and can I?
Currently, I am working on translating my perception into materials. Since emotion becomes colour, and the colour becomes tangible for my bodily perception or even a form, it means emotion = colour = body = physical. I build such a connection in my works, evoking primary, unconscious reactions. I want the mind to turn off and the viewer to perceive only on a visceral level. Maybe this way it will be possible to reach that good, that shining aura that is inherent in each of us by nature.
At Home, 2023
4. Being Different
After realizing that not everyone sees or feels colour, I understood just how varied people's perceptions can be. It's impossible to imagine how someone might not see colours during sex, or feel them from strong emotions or food. On the other hand, I began to hide these sensations and comments from others because they think I want to appear better or elevate myself above them.
While writing this work in 2024, I am simultaneously working on my artistic research, where, unsurprisingly, synaesthesia has taken one of the central places. However, after analysing other synesthetic artists, I realized that feeling colour does not mean being a good artist. These are unrelated skills that each need to be studied individually and then learned how to be applied correctly. In the art world, a vast array of elements is essential for creating a strong work. For example, in my opinion, simply applying paint to a canvas or projecting colour in a space would be outdated and irrelevant from a contemporary perspective. The viewer might come closer to understanding what it means to be in colour or to feel red, but then we are merely discussing technical means of depiction, direct indication.
Art, in my view, leaves room for reflection, further conclusions, and an aftertaste for the viewer. True art never says, "This is red, and I feel it like this when I experience pain”, for example. After all, "it's not that simple," and everything is straightforward only in propaganda and kitsch. Human perception involves biological reactions with a vast array of conditions, nuances, and contexts.
In this regard, I am looking for feelings and materials that can have tactile characteristics, their own history, and the right forms that would enhance colour and also create and evoke associations.
Moreover, the sense of reality has become richer and more vivid. Once, in art school, I was struck when I was taught how to see the shadows of trees. They aren't just dark; they reflect the sky from many surfaces and the state of the air, which also has colour. Similarly, synaesthesia revealed itself to me. I was taught that feelings are not just sour, sweet, sharp, loud, pleasant, or painful, but combinations of unconscious biological and cognitive reactions, which also have colour, sound, and other sensations at once. You just need to learn to recognize them.
5. Conclusions
Before discovering synaesthesia, my focus was always solely on colour for some reason. The shape was secondary, but now I pay particular attention to the content of colour.
I can distinguish colour as a state - this is an emotional reaction. Usually, a voluminous, large colour in space.
Colour as taste. This kind of colour is always in a smooth, almost liquid form. It resembles a lava lamp with floating bubbles.
Shapes of pain - this involves combinations of nerve-like stripes, lines, colour spots, and so on. This perception is close to coloured music.
Colour of pleasure - purple-pink, a mixture between colour as a state and colour as taste.
In my case, colour perception is sometimes overly dominant. If, in a gallery or museum (strangely enough, this hasn't happened yet in a museum), I see an incorrect colour, I feel physically uncomfortable, uneasy, and unpleasant. I immediately want to leave. Similarly, when an unfamiliar artist shows me their works and they are made in "incorrect" colours, my reactions are quite unambiguous, and I have to hide them because it is impossible to explain or describe what exactly is wrong.
Explaining the feelings of colour to other people is simply impossible, but I am convinced that through real art, a person can swing the pendulum of their perception. The more it can shift to different sides, the richer the feelings from life become.
The difficulty lies in the fact that society extols and propagates the education of the mind. First, the multiplication table, poems by heart, then theorems and articles of law, then precise rules in sports, and success in society is accurately measured by social status and objects of luxury. But this is all training for the mind and consciousness. Who is engaged in training the sensual, unconscious, and spiritual? The church, which also supports war or commits crimes? Art -which cannot coexist with itself or is subject to fashion and commercial success? Precision, reason, and rules are the main obstacles on the path to understanding both individual synaesthesia and general ethics.
In conclusion, it is important to note that in a time when physical reality can be forged in the digital world, and some political systems go so far as to turn parents against their own children, it is especially crucial to return to fundamental human values and beliefs, seek truth and honesty, and encourage diversity and peace.
Fragmented Perspectives (Untitled. Glossy pink), 2024, Photo print behind glossy acrylic glass
Untitled. Glossy pink, 2024, recycled newspapers, canvas, paint, screws, acrylic, wood, coating, 50 x 50 x 15 cm.
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