The Baroque Of Today

The Neo-Baroque world of Sasha Frolova, artist that uses latex to create costumes, sculptures, and large-scale installations.

Performance in the Catherine Hall of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace. Shooting for TUSH magazine. 2018
Costume Artist: Sasha Frolova
Photographer: Irina Voiteleva
Photoshoot for TUSH Magazine 44.
Models: Sasha Frolova, Ivan Matyushin, Daria Nikiforova.
Assistant: Yana Khromova

What would the Baroque period look like in the contemporary art scene? Born in Moscow, Russia where she currently lives and works, Sasha Frolova is a costume-sculpture artist whose art explores the fields of performance and fashion. She has exhibited all around the world from Venice to Los Angeles and her costumes have been featured in special events such as Dolce & Gabbana Alta Sartoria dinner at Villa Olmo in Como performance, Venice Carnival 2019 edition, and even in a Tim’s Walker photoshoot for W-magazine’s Best Performance Issue featuring amazing Nicole Kidman and 29 of Hollywood’s Biggest Stars!

Her art is an anthem to the ephemeral where passion and craving for excesses, is everywhere. The character that Sasha interprets is always exploring the image of women in culture and different eras; the research for a female image of the future is a constant in her work.

Her music project, AQUAAEROBIKA, synthesizes performance art and electronic music where she not only performs in museums and galleries but also in nightclubs, festivals, and public spaces.

Karen: Can you tell us more about your beginnings as a multidisciplinary artist?

Sasha Frolova: I have dreamed of becoming an artist since childhood. My mother is an artist too and she helped me to take this direction. I dedicated the initiation of my artistic practice to my teacher Andrey Bartenev, a famous Russian performance artist, with whom I have been working as an assistant for about 8 years.

I started with performance art and later I created sculptures. Then my personal visual world and parallel dimension began to appear. This is what I am interested in currently. I'm trying to manipulate with signs of the future, based on my feelings and intuition, and use them to create statements in the present.

I like to define myself as a visionary artist. In my work I try to foresee the future by creating its innovative aesthetics today. My sculptures and performances are characterized by flexibility, mobility, fluidity — properties that will determine the life and modus operandi of future generations.

In my works, I combine ironic reflection on the modern world and epicurean sensuality, eccentricity and philosophical meditativeness. My sculptures are a search for rhymes with symbols of pop culture, an attempt to hear the poetry of form and see its movement. This is a search for associations, new meanings of symbols, as well as the invention of new forms and signs.

K: The Baroque is one of the historical periods that inspires you the most. What specific elements can we see reinterpreted in your art?

SF: I think that this period is very much in tune with the spirit of our time and some of its ideas and principles inspire me a lot. Also, the latex itself is in tune with the mood of the 18th century with its frivolous mores, a craving for excesses, a cult of pleasure, and a passion for artificiality. Baroque, as a style and as a way of thinking, remains relevant until now because it made it possible to finally combine art and life, making it a game. 

In a sense, my work can be described as neo-baroque. I am attracted by the baroque rocaille theme, ovoid oval forms, pomp, and exaggeration of forms. I want to express my emotions through sculpture. Give form to something ephemeral, something that has no form, something that is difficult to explain and express. My sculptures are casts of emotions. They are visual fantasies inspired by different emotional states and color helps me in this task. This is similar to the baroque theory of affections, which is very interesting for me, but in sculpture. On one hand, I strive to evoke certain emotional states in the viewer, and on the other hand, to depict them in shape and color.

Photo 1: Queen of Clowns 2021. Selfportrait.

Photo 2: Twirl Pink edition 2016. Inflatables sculpure. Latex, metal.

Photo 3: Cyberprincess 2022. Sculptural dessert in collaboration with Pearls Desserts cafe-confectionery.

Photo 4: Fontes Amoris. Violet. 2021. Costume from “Fontes Amoris” series.
Photo: Kate Bugrova

K: Tell us more about your creative process. Approximately how much time does it take to create one of your wearable pieces?

SF: It depends on the complexity of the costume. Latex is a whole world, and it is quite difficult to work with. All my sculptures are basically a game of two-dimensional and three-dimensional. First, I draw sketches by hand, then on a computer, next paper patterns are created (according to which latex parts are cut out) and later glued into an object. Simply, it is a flat shape that takes on volume. All my hairstyles, costumes, and sculptures are bloated animated 2D images as if I'm transferring a comic or cartoon into 3D space in such an unusual way. I really like when the line between real and digital is almost erased when real clothes look like a 3D-render. And I try to achieve this perfection of digitality in my costumes.

I have a lot of different projects and the workflow depends on the type of project. Preparing for a performance, editing a large exhibition, or creating a new project and sketches for it are fundamentally different processes. Often all of them are intertwined, as projects are layered on top of each other. You have to keep up with everything and switch from project to project. I don't have a fixed schedule and things change frequently. There is always a plan for the day, week, and month, but these plans are very flexible. It seems to me that volatility is a trend of the time.

Photoshoot for Beatrice Magazine 2019.
Photo: Anna Aristova

K: Which are your preferred materials to work with? What connotation does latex have in your art?

SF: I work with different materials and techniques, but I am known because I work with latex, my main and favorite material. I use it for creating costumes, sculptures, and large-scale installations.  I have been working with latex for about 14 years. It is very sensitive and difficult to work with. It is afraid of UV rays and time, but I like its ephemerality, airiness, softness, and smoothness. Latex sculptures seem alive. 

Mainly I am interested in latex as a material and I want to cleanse it of its historical connotations and meanings, focusing on its properties. I am attracted by the unique biomorphic plastic and the softness of the lines that latex and air give. I am interested in the principle of shaping that is possible with the help of latex and which turns the material into my co-author. The form swells, stretches, turns round, has smooth bends, and it's biomorphic. This effect is hard to achieve with carving from marble or with sculpting from plaster. The material itself creates the shape and I am carried away by this co-creation - you never know how the pattern will swell, you try to figure it out, and this is a very interesting game-like process.

Latex and air generally make it possible to experiment with scale. Latex gloss - attracts and bewitches, creates a super aesthetic effect, and evokes associations with something ideal and perfect. What I want to achieve is to engage the viewer emotionally to fascinate, hypnotize, and excite him. In everything that I do, whether it is performance or sculpture, I strive to achieve an effect of fascination and latex is perfect for this. I really like the word "fascination", in art it means a kind of "enchanting", when you cannot take your eyes off, you are attracted by what you see and more often you do not understand why. This kind of visual impact is important for me.

Latex gives the feeling of a second skin, a spacesuit, evokes associations with the future and something supernatural or superhuman. It changes the plasticity of your movement and the feeling of your body. My character is transforming all the time, but one important thing remains unchanging – it is super femininity. I am looking for new significant images and trying to create collective neo-symbols of pop culture, absorbing as much as possible from visual traditions that existed before me. I explore the image of women in culture and try to rethink female images of different eras and styles, creating new collective images. This is a search for a female image of the future.

K: Do you remember the first sculptures that you created? 

SF: I created my first sculptures and costumes for performances from inflatable toys, connecting them with tape and tightening with polyethylene, trying to get a large light volume and a glossy texture. But such objects did not look ideal, they were heavy and difficult to work with. Therefore, as soon as I saw latex - it was love at first sight, I immediately realized that I want to try to work with it, try to create something out of it. Latex has a high visual aesthetic, and objects made of it look super-technological, which appeals to me. It is smooth and shiny, it has pure and bright colors - these features fascinate me. Although there are many nuances in working with this material, I try to transform the minuses that I encounter into pluses.

Air Island. 2018. Bouncing sculpture. PVC-film, electric fans.

New Holland Island, Saint Petersburg, Russia

K: What other materials would you like to experiment with?

SF: Today I make sculptures not only from latex – because latex can exist only indoors and cannot work outdoors, it is very fragile and sensitive to external influences. But I want to go out and swell to a new scale. I want to move in the direction of inflatable architecture, and textile architecture, to make large-scale inflatable public art projects. In 2018 I did a large-scale bouncing sculpture – Air Island – 13 m in length and 8 m in width – the biggest in my career. And would like to move forward in this direction. Also, I started to create fiberglass and 3d-printed copies of my sculptures – that can be commissioned to private collections and museums.

K: The ‘Inflatable Marie Antoinette’ was definitely a turning point in your career as an artist (and definitely one of my favorites). Can you tell us more about this project that you did in the Etretat Gardens in France?

SF: Performance for Etretat Gardens made me popular all over the world. It was dedicated to Marie Antoinette and was inspired by her epoch. I created Inflatable sculptural fashion pieces from latex, such as towering, faux hairdos, and form-fitting suits. I performed in these costumes with classical ballet dancers. This performance became very popular and during the last years, I showed it in many places all around the world from Venice to Los Angeles. I also performed at a special event for Dolce & Gabbana, made an appearance at Venice Carnival and my costumes took part in Tim’s Walker photoshoot for W-magazine.

The performance was created for the opening of the season in the Etretat Gardens in France in 2018 and was dedicated to Marie Antoinette. This dedication to the French queen was born from the desire to embody in the costume the features of the epoch of the 18th century with its freedom, festivity, and pomp of forms, but in a modern and original reading. The costumes corresponded to the ideal of female beauty of that time. The silhouettes and shapes of the costumes refer to puffy layered skirts and corsets that accentuate the curves of the figure. A high headdress imitates lush hairstyles in the spirit of the first ladies of the royal court. And the latex in which they are made is consonant with the mood of the 18th century with its free morals, craving for excesses, the cult of pleasure and artificiality. White was chosen for the costumes, because it leads us to white marble, to the familiar whiteness of antique plastic. Thanks to the color, in the context of the greenery of the garden, the costumes looked like living park sculptures. The idea of ​​a costume sculpture is the main one of my creative methods. In addition to references to antiquity, whites are reminiscent of the heavily powdered wigs of courtiers and bleached skin.

In addition to costumes, an inflatable sculpture was created for the performance - a five-meter trampoline boudoir of Marie Antoinette, reminiscent of the shape of an oyster shell, a throne, and a flower. The colors that were chosen were more similar to the Rococo era: milky white, light blue, and dusty pink.

Photo 1: Emmie America 2020.

Photo 2: Performance at Tsaritsyno Palace, Moscow, Russia 2018.
Photo: Tsaritsyno Museum

K: And why the Etretat Gardens?

SF: Etretat Gardens are located not far from the first oyster farm of Marie Antoinette, with which a delicacy was served at her table, so the organizers wanted to play around with the history of the place and the image of Marie Antoinette. She had never been to these places, but the garden owners really wanted to finally bring her there. This idea formed the basis of the performance. It was created as a garden promenade, prompting viewers to follow the queen and her retinue. This form made it possible to maintain the necessary distance with the viewer, not involving him in what was happening but allowing him to observe. In different areas of the garden, there were musicians, also dressed in costumes. Among them was the pianist Marinka Nikolay-Krylova (harpsichord). There were DJ sets and theremin. Different characters and musicians performed in different areas of the garden and the promenade throughout the whole garden united the action.

During the three days of the opening, my sculptures were placed throughout the garden. I must say that Etretat Gardens is a unique example of a sculptural garden, so for me, it was a perfect match and I was happy to fit my sculptures into this amazing garden. The promenade allowed guests to spend the garden and give time to inspect all the components of the project.

K: In an interview with the author Manu Sharma you mention that your work is highly inspired by nature. How do you manage to combine nature and synthetic language through your art?

SF: In my opinion inflatables are the closest metaphor for new living forms. It seems to me that inflatable objects create the feeling of living beings, the shape is soft and warm, like us, and the smoothness of the material resembles skin. I like the fragility and ephemerality of inflatable objects and at the same time their emotionality and positivity.

Latex is the sap of the hevea tree, it is an organic material. And like all living things, sculptures and costumes made of latex are temporary, not eternal. In this sense, my art is a hymn to the ephemeral. My forms are fantasies that at any moment, like a soap bubble, can deflate, disappear, or dissipate. But they evoke lively emotions, change the mood, and affect the viewer, and for me, this is more important than eternity. I give up eternity for the beauty of the moment.

Photo: Roman Ermakov 2019.

K: You are also a singer for the music project Aquaaerobika. What musical genres we can find in your Spotify account? Is there any musician that you would like to collaborate with?

SF: I like many artists and many genres. I like electronic, pop, K-pop, classical, and opera. I am a fan of baroque music. I would like to create electronic opera someday and combine electronic sound with classical instruments, something in the way of Plava Laguna or Klaus Nomi. And I would like to collaborate with Yasutaka Nakata - Japanese composer and sound producer of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu – this is a dream!

The Aquaaerobika project, for example, uses original tracks that are written especially for this project by various composers that I collaborate with. In other performances, I often use classical music. It's great when you get to work with live musicians, with an orchestra, or an ensemble. Sometimes, for large projects, it turns out to create new musical material, experiment, combining classical music with electronics. I am especially interested in working with baroque music. It seems relevant to me to combine it with modern visual images and technologies, which makes it easier for the viewer to perceive this music. Baroque music is difficult for a modern person who is accustomed to fast tempos, to a different sound, and in synthesis with bright, rich visual content, it becomes closer and more understandable to the viewer.

In AQUAAEROBIKA I try to synthesize performance art and electronic music. I chose the format of a pop project, thanks to which I can work for a wider audience, and perform not only in museums and galleries but also in clubs, festivals, and other public spaces. Thanks to this, I can acquaint the public with contemporary art and adapt the viewer to a more correct perception of it. This is a show with original music, all tracks are written specifically for the show and I sing live.  To sing in latex is not easy, but the visual impact justifies the difficulty. Dancers in avant-garde Bauhaus-style costumes with huge inflatable decorations and objects look rather like live sculptures and turn the whole show into one moving sculpture.

K: Do you have any experience with criticism? How do you handle it?

SF: There are always people who are dissatisfied with something and that don't like something about you. I try not to pay attention to it. Whatever you focus your attention on - becomes more in your life. I don't notice negative reviews and rarely get them. I think that art should be kind and beautiful. And this is what I am trying to focus on. All of my sculptures carry a positive message and balance on the verge of being childish and naive, but this is done consciously. Positively charged contemporary art is still rare, but lately, this trend is becoming popular. The information field nowadays is oversaturated with negative and the viewer is increasingly in need of beauty, vivid emotions, and joy, switching consciousness, as through appearance, how it looks, image, form, and through interaction and play.

K: What do you see as being the future of your art?

SF: I am interested in synthesis and searching for new art forms. I like to work in different genres, combining them and creating a product that is difficult to attribute to any particular direction. Recently I got carried away with classical genres such as ballet and opera and combining classical material with performance art. Also, I would like to develop myself in the direction of public art sculpture. I want to create large-scale inflatable and non-inflatable pieces, try new materials and techniques, and move in the direction of textile architecture. 

I see the future of art in synthesis. I believe that artists drive the progress of mankind, invent and create the future. And the goal of the artist is the creation of new - new forms, new ideas, new genres, the creation of what has never existed before. It is very hard to create something super-new - we are limited by some kind of framework of perception. But new materials and new media appear, and thanks to this, the possibilities for synthesis become richer. Moving forward with technological progress and using these new media, we can push the boundaries of perception and make more interesting statements in art.

Costume design for Khollisy art film “Hot and Cold”. 2020
Costume Artist: Sasha Frolova
Photographer: Valeria Suchkova (13-17), Sasha Frolova (18,19)
Artist, performer: Khollisy
Make up artist: Sofya Kristallikova
Camera: Dimitri Venkov, Albert Soldatov
Project for Moscow Triennial 2020, GARAGEMCA, Moscow, Russia