Pravda (2010)

St. Petersburg’s Varvara Pomidor (Varvara Vladimirovna Lukyanova, b. 1975) graduated from the Nikolai Roerich Art Institute and the St. Petersburg Art and Industry Academy. She also took a course in printmaking and photography at the Georg Simon Ohm Fachhochschule in Nuremberg, Germany and later served as art director of the design studio Mediamama. From book illustration and design, she eventually turned to comics. Her work is characterized by a whimsical, childlike but at the same time disconcertingly adult sensibility; her stories at times touch on questions beyond the personal, to tragedy and historical trauma. In her story/cycle Pravda, Pomidor combines memory fragments, Soviet politics, and collage to depict a late Soviet-era childhood.