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Blurring time, identity, and vision into layered apparitions

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Artist Bio

Dr Natalia Jezova is awards wining, multidisciplinary artist based in London. She communicates through a wide variety of media, including painting, film, photography and installation. Her art addresses cultural memory, identity and gender issues.
In all her projects, Natalia employs metaphorical or symbolic language. She mixes classical and modern aspects; blur the lines between imagination, reality and memory.A few years ago, Natalia's vision began to deteriorate drastically. She now sees only blurred, overlapping silhouettes: a constant double vision effect that redefined how she perceives the world. Rather than retreat, Natalia choses to explore this new visual reality through her art, adopting superimposition as a central technique: layering multiple images to reflect how she now processes visual information. Superimposition allows Natalia to embed multiple messages within one work, where meaning is constructed through metaphor, memory, and semiotic association. Two images form a third, symbolic one, encouraging the viewer to think, remember, and feel.
Natalia's latest project, Dialogue, explores the intersection of past and present, reinterpreting historical themes of gender inequality and the female role in society through a contemporary lens. These themes remain relevant, not only in historical contexts, but also in contemporary life. In this series, Natalia superimpose iconic Old Masters paintings with self-portraits interwoven with elements of floral still life. The recurring motif of flowers and the female figure symbolises two intertwined forces: both nurturing and life - giving, offering a poetic reflection on strength, femininity, and transformation.

Artist Statement

Through layered portraits that merge Renaissance women with self-portraits, I collapse centuries of visual history into a living dialogue. Dialogue reclaims agency for those once silenced in art history, inviting audiences to witness memory, identity, and cultural inheritance refracted through a contemporary lens.
My work begins where history blurs, at the intersection of memory, identity, and cultural inheritance. I look into the faces of women painted a few centuries ago not as relics, but as interlocutors, demanding their stories be reconsidered through a contemporary lens. By layering these images with my own presence, I create a dialogue exploration of history and collective memory, resonates with curatorial insistence on bridging past and present, and honours feminist and intercultural perspectives. What emerges is not a static portrait, but a conversation, spoken across time, inviting audiences to inhabit a space where history is alive, contested, and generative

Professional Highlights

Natalia's professional career began ten years ago. Her BA and MA studies were a fascinating challenge that inspired her to explore, develop her skills, and expand her knowledge. This journey led her to pursue a Professional Doctorate in Fine Arts, which she successfully obtained from the University of East London in 2021.

Since 2015, Natalia has exhibited internationally in more than a hundred exhibitions. Her first solo show took place at the 'Nati' Gallery (London) in 2016.

Find Me

Portfolio

DIALOGUE series

The Dialogue series explores the intersection of past and present, reinterpreting historical themes of gender inequality and the female role in society through a contemporary lens. In this series, I superimpose iconic Old Masters paintings with self-portraits interwoven with elements of floral still life. The recurring motif of flowers and the female figure symbolises two intertwined forces—both nurturing and life-giving - offering a poetic reflection on strength, femininity, and transformation. By selecting objects and colours, I encode my images with deeper meanings, inviting viewers to uncover the layers of interpretation. The project's images were conceived digitally using specialised equipment tailored to accommodate visual impairment, allowing me to work with precision despite significant limitations in sight. Over the course of several weeks, I engaged in an intensive process of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional refinement, ensuring that the final composition resonated on multiple levels. Upon completion, the digital image was transferred onto highest quality canvas and further elevated through meticulous hand-finishing with acrylic, airbrush, and gold leaf.

DOUBLE VISION series

For the Double Vision series, I choose fragile flowers. They have the strongest vanitas connotation, due to their brief life span: "Barely do they come to full bloom when they soon begin to wither” (Sander, 2008, p.150). Flowers as the most obvious symbol for the transience of life, have many hidden meanings. In this series I create developed interpretations that invite the viewer to participate in ‘decoding’ the symbolic sense. A few years ago, my vision had started to drastically deteriorate. I can now only see the blurry silhouettes with the double vision effect. I decided to show how I see the world around me – just blurry multiple silhouettes. This was one of the reasons why I started to use the superimposition technique (in which two images are simultaneously visible over each other) in my art practice. This technique gave me an opportunity to communicate the multiple messages that I aimed to embed in my works. On the semiotic level connection between two images is made through signs, themes, and memory. By linking one image with another, a resulting third meaning is ultimately conceived, metaphorically. Two concepts are associated when they occur in the same thought experience; thinking of one will then cause the recall of the entire experience, in which the other concept is also present. I invite the viewer to draw from their own memory and emotional recognition, stimulating their intellectual reflexivity and perception. It allows for the process of co-creation by inviting the spectator’s imagination to build a unique interpretation and dialogue. The project's images were conceived digitally using specialised equipment tailored to accommodate visual impairment, allowing me to work with precision despite significant limitations in sight. Over the course of several weeks, I engaged in an intensive process of aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional refinement - ensuring that the final composition resonated on multiple levels. Upon completion, the digital image was transferred onto highest quality canvas and further elevated through meticulous hand-finishing with acrylic and airbrush. This deliberate fusion of digital innovation and traditional materiality imbues the work with both conceptual depth and tactile richness, bridging contemporary visual language with classical craft.

EARLY YEARS series

At the beginning of my professional artistic career my work was mainly focused on figurative painting. My paintings were inspired by the surrealism of Salvador Dali and influenced by my emotional experience. I used symbols and visual images arising from the subconscious.