My name is Aliona Kuznetsova, I am a photographer living and working in Silicone Valley, represented by City Art Gallery on the West Coast and See.me on the East Coast. I believe that my art is a mashup of everything I saw, felt, thought and experienced. More than this: through all my life – four countries I lived in, dozens of cities I traveled to, a mood disorder I am battling, meeting and parting with my closest friends – my art has been a silver lining that helped me day by day to refine the understanding of who I really am.

I was born in Kyiv in 1985. My childhood fell on the collapse of the soviet union and the chaos of the 90th, and it was very turbulent. As a psychological safe haven from the chaos emerged my first passion - one for math and physics. I earned multiple prizes in physics olympiads, including the first prize in the all-Ukraine competition. This, and being the youngest person to pass the famous theoretical minimum exam, opened the world for me and allowed me to see myself working internationally. My passion for physics didn't remain, though - even though I earned a Master's degree, I ended up working as a photographer full-time by the end of my studies.

I worked my first three years as a portrait photographer. It was a grunt work, but it taught me to connect with people, work with different faces and understand light well. After that, I was able to move to Lausanne, Switzerland, where I started trying my hand at fashion. Within 6 years of living in Switzerland, I developed my brand and appeared in magazines like Marie Claire, Elle Swiss, Forbes Romania, Femina and others. I also educated myself in edgy and disruptive ways of modern European art. Despite these advances, I still felt very isolated, which resulted in my relocation to the United States in 2016.

My first home in the US was Boston. There, once again, I felt the freedom I used to feel in my youth while connecting to amazingly talented and driven artists. Finally, my ideas felt in place and a part of a larger creative tapestry, which gave me the bravery to shift the focus once again - to fine art. In the first three years, I managed to have 2 personal exhibitions as well as showcases in Boston and New York. And then - just before COVID, I moved to the Bay Area.

COVID years were highly introspective for me - not being able to work with a model and team, I had to look within and, through still-life and self-portraiture, learn the basics of evocative storytelling again. I will always be grateful to my fellow artists in Gallery House, who helped me through this humbling journey. In the end, I was able to overcome my limitations, which was reflected by multiple awards as well as my first presence in a museum show - North x Northwest: Out of Isolation by Yellowstone Art Museum.