Thank you! This kind of support can be hugely transformative for artists and stands in contrast to the general lack of funding for the arts, especially in the UK. I’m extremely grateful for the award as it will allow me to develop new ways of working with live performance that I hope will reach a wider audience.

My multi-media approach comes very much from thinking rhythmically or musically, and I tend to think of images in terms of sound and vice versa. Any medium, even drawing or photography, can be time-based, and anything time-based has rhythm to it, which is my reference point when choreographing text, video, image, etc. I see the relationship between music and moving image, for example, as a dominant/submissive one, where music often takes over completely to determine our emotions when we watch a film. I try to subvert these kinds of dynamics through my work.

I’m not sure I agree. I believe socially significant art can both reflect and contrast the circumstances of our existence. My aim is not to overwhelm or desensitise my audience in any way. Every element is considered in my work and has its own function or purpose within the piece as a whole. Opposing views are often expressed via different mediums, voices, and roles. Within that, I am concerned with contemporary modes of communication and mediation, as well as acceleration, interruption, and simultaneity.

I see movement and physical expression as having the potential to challenge dominant, traditional ways of thinking and theorising, and I’ve always engaged with ideas of embodied knowledge. My video Wanna Be Me Wanna (2020) shows me at two life stages: five-year-old me performs an improvised dance while, next to her, present-day Daria copies her movements. In emulating my childhood dance through physical movement, I’m searching for an alternative to a contemporary world view, recalling one that was imaginative, confident, and generous, and accessing an abstract knowledge otherwise out of reach.

I developed the character during my BA studies, and she was very much based on my own, sometimes embarrassing and obnoxious, character traits. She gave me a measure of freedom to express myself by allowing me to hide behind a mask. I was critical of the type of persona I was portraying, but I also wanted to be compassionate and do more than just that. She was often taken at face value and criticised as not being extreme enough, or she was seen as merely perpetuating harmful, mainly female, stereotypes. Even though I didn’t entirely agree, I gave in and decided to kill her off in 2019.
Last year, I felt a need to take a closer look at her positive, redeemable qualities, reasons for bringing elements of ‘the bitch’ back. I wrote and performed Circumbendibus, in which I elaborated on the criticism she received and my own frustrations with the narcissistic character. I chronicled her short life, death, and eventual resurrection, embodying a range of voices and roles, using monologue, live music and the singing voice. I also lamented a period of housing renovations and my partner’s and my aggravating interactions with dust, chaos, and ‘the BOYS’, in order to work through things like female rage, heteronormative queerness, and my own practical relationship to certain aspects of feminist and queer discourse.
I aspire to evolve, to look to the future, but I think it’s equally important to be generous with past selves. Part of me hates the idea of this interview because I’ll be a different person tomorrow, next week, in five years, etc.

I was initially looking at family constellations, dynamics and relationships, how we unwillingly and unwittingly end up embodying facets of our parents which we’ve rejected our entire lives, and how external criticism is internalised. I was also processing anger about giving in to past critiques, and looking at rage as an emotion more broadly, how its expression is gendered, regulated, repressed.
When I turned thirty at the start of my final year at the RA, I felt very invested in the cliché of a radical transformation needing to occur as I entered my fourth decade. I manifested that change by resurrecting a former alter ego and writing a song about this, and creating an entire performance on my birthday. Similarly, for my ‘final’ piece, I wanted to really run with the (unhelpful) formula of making one’s degree show the ultimate, largest, most ambitious work to date, so I attempted to encapsulate my entire history as an artist within that one piece.

Within the installation Not Something You Say, the song was performed via five versions of myself on video screens spread across the walls of the room. I had recorded myself singing the chorus inside the half-finished installation while working on it for the show. I wanted to use harmonisation and dissonance to ultimately create something that was hopeful and ambitious, rather than forestalling or defensive.
My work has always thematised the process of art-making and self-awareness, and I think as artists we are influenced greatly by tastes, demands and desires that have been instilled in us through a patriarchal and capitalist framework. While I try to block these things out, I sometimes find it extremely useful to imagine the entire world watching as I make work.

It’s a delicate moment within UK culture, and there is a lot for artists to navigate. Public funds have been cut and costs of education have risen, so private sponsorship is often vital for artists on an individual level. The private sector often plays to conservative tastes, so there is ultimately a danger of a homogenising effect on the art scene, a further challenge for artists today.

The prize money includes a production fund for my show, so it’s very exciting for me to imagine my work on a more ambitious, larger scale. Although I thoroughly enjoy doing all aspects of a production myself, learning new skills needed for this, and I don’t want to completely let go of my DIY approach, there is technical equipment I really want to try out, and potential collaborators I would love to work with.