Thousands of Stitches: Liza Smirnova on her Artistic Practice

Over the past decade, Liza Smirnova (lizasmirnova.art) has developed a distinctive artistic vocabulary in which threads, fabrics, drawings, and paints operate as equal expressive elements. Working across embroidery, textile collage, painting, and installation, she has consistently expanded the possibilities of textile-based practice, moving beyond traditional distinctions between craft and contemporary art.

What is particularly compelling about Smirnova’s work is that her materials never function merely as materials. Thread becomes a drawing tool, embroidery becomes a form of painting, and textiles become repositories of memory, labor, and lived experience. Her compositions are immediately recognizable: densely layered surfaces populated by flowers, animals, imagined beings, and shifting landscapes that exist somewhere between observation and imagination. Yet beneath their apparent lightness lies a focused examination of the nature of personal narratives formed and carried through time.

Questions of identity, belonging, and transformation have become increasingly central to Smirnova’s practice in recent years. Following her relocation from Russia to Portugal, themes of migration and adaptation entered her work. Rather than approaching these subjects directly, however, she often turns to metaphor. Gardens, flowers, masks, and hybrid forms emerge as visual devices through which broader questions can be explored: What remains unchanged when we move between places? Which parts of ourselves are inherited, and which can be reinvented? How do new roots take hold?

.ART spoke with Liza Smirnova about the evolution of her multidisciplinary practice, the role of generational memory and migration in her work, and her ongoing project Hundreds of Flowers, a long-term exploration of adaptation, growth, and self-understanding. Our conversation reveals an artist whose practice continues to evolve while remaining grounded in a fundamental belief: that art can serve as a means of making sense of one’s place in the world, connecting inner experience with the realities that surround us.

You describe drawing as a way of understanding yourself and your place in the world from an early age. How has the relationship between art-making and self-understanding evolved over time?

I think the main idea of my practice is still the process of becoming aware of myself. From time to time, it may change its form; sometimes other participants, new circumstances, and responsibilities may join this process, but its essence does not change. Drawing is still, for me, a way of living through life, connecting the inner with the outer, and finding like-minded people.

Your work creates a distinctive visual universe shaped by vivid colours, dreamlike forms, and layered textile surfaces. How would you describe this world, and what kind of emotional or sensory experiences are you hoping to invite viewers into?

I would say that the world of my works is fairy-tale-like and magical, but there is as much magic in it as there is in real life.

Any reality becomes filled with magic when there is an awareness that the time of life is a gift. I would like my works to remind the viewer of this.

Your practice moves fluidly between embroidery, textile collage, painting, and drawing. What draws you to combining these materials, and how do they shape the emotional life of an artwork?

Textile attracts me with its texture and sense of color completeness; a painted surface attracts me with its complex texture and color transitions; and embroidery is responsible for air and tactile appeal. By combining these layers, I am able to add the necessary complexity and difference in volume to my works, which supports the narrative and gives it a certain depth.

You speak about the energy accumulated through weeks of stitching and manual labor. Do you see the act of making itself as a form of meditation, ritual, or healing practice?

My practice works very well with parallel reflections on different topics. I think I chose this approach precisely because it gives me a lot of time for contemplation and for making sense of my human experience. Sometimes the process really feels like meditation; sometimes it develops rapidly and resembles a chaotic dance more than anything else. In any case, it is a space that I can fill with whatever I want, depending on the current circumstances.

Generational memory is an important theme in your work. Are there particular family stories, objects, or inherited traditions that continue to shape your artistic vocabulary?

Yes, there are some stories and objects. A long time ago, I inherited my grandmother’s box of embroidery threads. Gradually, new skeins were added to the threads that were already inside, and since I was not as neat as she was, over the decades the threads turned into a large multicolored lump resembling a nest. Later, it became so tangled that it stopped being a functional material and turned into an art object. When I look at it, it makes me happy to realize where its volume begins.

There is also a touching story about how my mother, while pregnant with me, was making a large cross-stitch embroidery with wildflowers. After I was born, she was never able to return to finishing this work, and for many years it hung on the wall unfinished, but still framed. I often looked closely at this work. I think it taught me that empty spaces can tell more about themselves than fully completed objects.

You describe art as a language that does not require translation. How has the experience of migration transformed your artistic practice and sense of identity?

It is difficult to reflect on change when you are at the very center of the process of adaptation, but I can say with confidence that almost everything has changed, from the threads and paints I used to the techniques and subjects. The first and most difficult realization came when, after moving from Russia to Portugal, I understood that before, I had felt my art as an eternally blooming flower against the gray background of a melancholic, cool landscape, while now it was simply a bright spot among other bright spots. At that moment, I think even the color palette of my works became a little quieter, but after some time everything returned to its original colorfulness. Now I feel quite comfortable with this realization, it is nice to be among those who are similar to you.

Has living between cultures and diverse cultural codes changed the symbols, colours, or narratives that appear in your work?

Yes, without a doubt, it has changed them. At the very least, I began to explore complex themes that I had never been drawn to in calmer times. This is how, a few years ago, my project “In Search of Identity” was born: a series of masks made in different techniques. While creating them, I was reflecting on whether it is possible to assemble one’s identity anew: on the things I will never be able to leave behind, and on whether one should take into a new life the things that, at first glance, may not seem useful there.

What themes or questions are currently occupying you that you would like to explore further in future projects?

At the moment, I am working on the project “Hundreds of Flowers.” It continues a cycle of works about self-awareness during emigration. The years of adaptation in Portugal have been, for me, both the most fascinating adventure and a difficult trial. During this period, art became my consolation: I began observing the flowers growing in the garden of our house, the way their leaves and blossoms slowly opened. I sketched them and thought about how the speed of their growth could become a metaphor for how my own roots grow into new soil. I wanted to make this process visible, and so I decided that, while waiting for documents, a wait that stretched over years, I would create my own garden of flowers using all the techniques available to me. I am working on this project now, and I am very curious to see what it will become.

In addition to exhibiting your work offline, you have cultivated a strong digital presence through Instagram and your .art website. How important are these online spaces for connecting with audiences, and what led you to choose a .art domain for your website?

My website and Instagram blog are wonderful tools that help me interact with my viewers directly, without the influence of institutions, which, unfortunately, do not understand or accept all artists. I am glad to have this space for a one-on-one conversation, and the .ART domain immediately suggests that we will be speaking the language of art.