Images by: Klari Agar

Gallery 2

Alina, Olena, Lana and Jana

Tanya Cubric

Alina, Olena, Lana and Jana is a single-channel digital video work and installation. It is a re-imagining of four Eastern European characters that Cubric played as an actress for various UK television and stage productions. These characters were difficult for her to let go of. She began to dream around them and questioned what their liberation might look like. How could they become aspirational? Were they doomed?

Using the tools of fantasy and play, she began to create new versions of these protagonists with SFX makeup artist and co-producer Erika Beiza, and developed scenarios for their liberations with videographer and co-producer Klari Agar. Together they shot the footage which enabled her to critique the medium of TV/film by utilising its own methods of production against itself.

With regards to the performances, she knew these characters inside-out having played them before, Cubric wanted to unshackle them, so she performed them unscripted. She carried this ethos of playfulness into the editing room in order to take full ownership over their new narratives. Cubric also wanted to address the viewer directly and gently implicate their role in the demand for these stories.