How To Be Unapologetically Yourself

i will soon become the same color as my

suit because i’m very

oh i’m so nervous uh hi everyone um

this is me my name is paulina um

yeah you might have seen me on social

media looking ridiculously as this

as you can tell i really like glitter

and i will explain later why

um and it first seemed like a really

narcissistic idea

idea to talk about myself and my story

but i realized that

the meaning of you is a very big part of

my journey and i thought it’s a very fun

way to show how you can become or how

you can be or how i was

and still am being unapologetically

myself

and yeah i think i’m the most qualified

person to talk about how to be

unapologetically yourself

looking like this um a little bit about

myself

and what makes me me i’m from the

biggest country in the world russia

uh that tiny tiny dot is where i’m from

it’s a

ridiculously small city of 300 000

people

i was really bad at maths i was really

bad at science i was really bad at

everything honestly

and my parents decided to put me into

art school

so when i was seven and all my

classmates were 14

because nobody wanted to be enrolled in

a school that was so traditional

serious was where we were learning about

like art theory and art history and

drawing with charcoals nobody wanted to

put their kid through that stress

except my crazy parents and

because i loved bright colors and

experimenting

i was told to repeat the year

in the history of a hundred year old

establishment

i was the only one who ever repeated a

year so that was really really

embarrassing

and but i managed to graduate when i was

and funny enough years later this was

one of my first art pieces that i’ve

done with glitter

it was done in singapore and this is a

world map where i covered

russian glitter and that was kind of my

first steps towards realizing

or remaking a painful memory something

happy by using glitter

and i think everybody has different

like ideas of what their childhood was

and mine was

a very strange salad of emotions

and having that experience made me

actually a really angry kid

and i wasn’t able to process things

properly and i became really angry and

i had to change like three schools in

one month and

i remember my last experience of a

school um

in russia they they told my parents that

i’ll never be able to speak english

because i’m so bad in subjects so that’s

interesting

uh but what i learned from all of this

is that

though i never was good in school and

it’s funny that i’m saying this in front

of like

inside of a school but um i never gave

up on like being my authentic self

um i learn how to manage my anger

because it’s not cute to be angry nobody

likes that

and direct it into something useful and

prove to everybody that you can be

whatever you want if this is what you

want to look like

do it and another very important thing

is that not really everybody is ready

for your authentic self

you might push it down to people’s

throat but it’s not for everybody

so just know when to step back and

for the topic of angry art i made a

bunch of that

in my past school life

and this were pieces inspired by um

riot

who i found out about when i was in

school and i was really i was

it was a lot of pain to go through

realizing what happened to them as a

russian

and also a woman artist and this was

kind of a first time that i experienced

using my body as a medium

and also a first experience of creating

kind of like an alter ego

i didn’t i could pretend to be really

anyone and i pretended to be this

powerful

badass woman but i also experienced and

made a lot of art from a happy place

and i think trying to reconnect with my

russian roots

relearning my family history and bonding

with my granddad who’s

the keeper of all these stories uh made

me kind of come up it’s still an ongoing

project where i

transform portraits of my family and now

trying to transform portraits of other

people

and i feel like those photos are so like

sad and grim

and i am highlighting women in the

families because

to me all of them carry the pain of so

many families

um so i’m using sparkles and fun

materials to kind of give it a new life

and yeah when my

parents decided when i was 12 that they

want to move

to a different country it was a whole

different shock

and it was really scary because me and

my little brother we were put in a

english-speaking school we both didn’t

even know how to introduce ourselves in

english and my first class was

literature and they were reading macbeth

and i was like what is going on

and um however it brought us really

close as a family

and i remember that one thing that was

going through my mind all the time is

that

i am not capable to speak english but

what i have

is art and what i have is creativity and

that doesn’t need much of a translation

so i quickly found the people who are

creative

classmates got everybody together and

started doing

art and like i don’t know trying to

create some kind of commotion

and a lot of really happy art is for me

is

like has to do with that memory because

the moment you become comfortable

you start using fun and bright colors

and experimenting

and i truly found like my tribe and

the people who were you know encouraging

the process

and funny enough um so the place that i

moved to which is also important is

cypress

and a cypress is a small tiny beautiful

island and three years in

i decided that i’m really bored and i

need to keep moving and my crazy father

was like okay

where do you want to go and i was like

singapore it’s really far away and

sounds weird

and and he was like okay so at um

16 i moved to singapore completely alone

uh got accepted to lasalle i don’t know

how it happened i just packed my bags

and left

and yeah i’m not encouraging anyone to

quit school at 16.

do i wish that my parents stopped me yes

a lot of strange things happen because

of it and delays in education

but what i truly encourage is to listen

to yourself and now i would

i don’t regret my decision but what

that experience made me is grow up

really fast as well as be extremely

lonely

because i feel like back then 10 years

ago there were not many people in the

same situation as me

and believe me no people from russia or

europe were interested to come and

pursue their art education in singapore

yeah it was really weird and again i was

trying to find comfort in like

art so i was the first one to come to

school at 7 30 a.m

and the last one to leave at 12 midnight

because i really had nothing else to do

and i was like i’m just gonna make it

work

and even in singapore i was told that i

should quit being an artist because

i paint cartoons and i should stop

embarrassing my parents

um and yeah i decided to turn that

around because i realized i’m in such a

beautiful and giving space

and through that i created a lot of

really beautiful pieces because i miss

my family a lot

so this is my graduation work where i

kind of use my family portraits and used

flowers which is the significance of

love

in russia to you know just share a

little bit of family history with

everyone

and then i graduated and i thought i’m

awesome i know everyone i’ve done

so many internships so many cool events

i couldn’t find a job for eight months

it was miserable time and i was like how

can i and i was like going through that

emotion of like oh my god it’s all

because i quit school

now it’s gonna bite me in the ass and it

took eight months

of like and i’m telling you i did every

job possible

a waitress a nanny a tour guide

translator

muralist like everything and

when i was almost ready to give up

somebody remembered that i was russian

and took me to moscow to build festival

of singapore with singapore tourism

board

and then somebody else on the way to

that

found me and said do you want to come

and try to work for

uh experiential marketing agency and i

was like what

okay um so i started this

strange during journey of being an adult

and i think

some of the things that i learned from

it is that you can’t give up being

curious

have no fear because in my case i

literally have nothing to lose

nobody to impress here so i was like

okay and be positive

be resourceful and i think the

resourcefulness definitely comes from

art school days you literally can make

something out of trash so i was like

this i will apply that to my

professional life and don’t stop

learning

and while i was experiencing a very

strange and

like life-changing and

like life of a working adult i also

started experimenting with

my favorite material which was somehow

became glitter and it’s a joke now you

will see it

it’s everywhere follows me everywhere i

go and you will have it at home

tomorrow all of you so my classmates

started joking and somebody even called

me the herpes of our world

once and

all of this started because i had an

amazing mentor in my performance class

who told me

what scares you the most and for me it

was being alone

and not being able to like talk to

people just being in this like

i don’t know confinement and he said

okay

take that and your favorite material and

put them together

so my experience and with performance

and how this piece came about

is me literally covering myself in

glitter and

sitting in this strange trance-like

state for

hours and it’s it’s very strange but

i’ve never experienced anything like

this and i still to this day chase the

feeling

and i wanted to briefly talk about some

of my favorite

pieces that i’ve done first one where i

look really shocked is the first time i

am in glitter

um in front of people uh blue piece is

done with

lasalle students who are doing an

exhibition on

color indigo gold one is

when a really big gallery in singapore

noticed me and wanted to use me as like

help them invite people into a gallery

and i think the fourth one is

a piece that um is very painful was very

painful to talk about and i was

encouraged not to

post it and i was encouraged not to

release anything about it because of

criminal

um circumstances in russia

and this is a piece that was a

collaboration with a london-based

photographer who photographed

naked women all around the world so this

is the first time that i went

nude which is also very unlike me in

support of a russian lgbtq

artist an activist who was persecuted

for six years

for spreading of pornography for

illustrations of body positivity

so a bunch of women around the world

came out and did this beautiful series

and i decided to use color red because i

thought that

this is a color that will make people

like stare

and notice and it’s associated with a

lot of powerful things

and a lot of people ask me like why do

you do it because

it’s pain in the ass to wash off it’s

it’s

um now i only use environmentally

friendly choices but before it wasn’t

um why do you do it like it’s so strange

it takes up so much of your time i

ask myself this question every time as

well but then for those moments

you see that little girl so this is a

piece that i’ve done

for sentosa cove um

we kind of wanted to create if i was a

real person

how would like my surroundings look like

and we built this shimmer shack

where they gave where we gave kids

cotton candy and they get to like talk

to me

and while i was performing and this girl

she was legit convinced that i was a

fairy

and she would come every weekend from

her like house in santosa cove she will

run

and she will sit next to me and just

look at me and then she’d be like can

you come home with us

and this is her and me and her mom are

still in touch

so i think in moments like this i’m

definitely like

very glad that i get to experience a

world of performance art

and i think another really great

positive thing about getting to know

so many singaporean creatives and never

really giving up

on like trying to push myself up in the

scene is being trusted with amazing

project my friend narelle

mu local musician trusted me to build

and create

and art direct her whole music video so

this is kind of a process

from sketch to um building to how it

looks like on a video

my best friend bella helped me with

painting those walls

it was a group effort but yeah it’s

it’s so fun and i think another really

important thing for somebody who is

a working professional but also

struggling to

keep up this persona of like this

creative badass

i started overthinking everything and i

was like wait but now that i have a job

nobody knows i have a job everybody

thinks that i’m a full-time

artist somehow and um this

this like i don’t have a ton of

followers on instagram but that like

idea to keep up and always try to

impress people started

really ruining my creativity and

only last year i convinced myself not to

overthink and just let things

guide you and yeah when you create

things

authentically everybody else can see it

and i think today there’s so many things

that i am made out of

always evolving definitely always

passionate

somebody who still doesn’t know how to

accept rejection

um still someone who’s learning the

value of my work and myself

and extremely anxious

and yeah in that period of like

trying to impress myself and push myself

to do things

i was like i need to stop everybody

everybody can tell i can tell that i’m

unhappy

so i just started making things whenever

i feel like it and i think people start

noticing

and last year almost in the same time i

had a

best birthday present when vogue

singapore did a

like a few pages on me and that was

insane

and you guys contacted me in the same

time so it was like

i realized that whenever people like

when people feel that you’re happy

a good things will come to you as well

and i think

what’s really important and what i want

to tell everybody is that

being out unapologetically yourself will

have a lot of sacrifices a lot of

missing your family a lot of fights with

people around you but it’s definitely

worth it and i encourage you all to do

the same

thank you

thank you