About
Inna Razumova was born in Moscow, Russia, and has been living in California since 1991. She graduated from UCLA with a BFA in Painting/Drawing. She received her MFA from CADRE Laboratory for Digital Media Art at San Jose State University.
Inna is a tenured professor in the Art Department at the City College of San Francisco and has exhibited her work locally and internationally in venues such as GenArt (San Francisco, CA), Institute of Contemporary Arts (San Jose, CA), The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Art (Ashbury Park, NJ), and internationally at MAD´03 NET (Madrid, Spain), Museum of Contemporary Art (Krasnoyarsk, Russia),International Symposium of Electronic Art (San Jose, CA), L'arboretum Marcel Kroenlein de Roure, France
Artist Statement
My work can be envisioned as commentary on the fluctuating membrane between science, art, and myth-making. It combines scientific methods with non-scientific data, so that the distinctions between reality and fable are intentionally collapsed to reveal a universe of evolving archetypes. To this end, among my influences are medieval manuscripts that fuse mythology and science, biological illustration, the history of science and pseudoscience, curiosity cabinets, and natural history museum displays—all of which prevail upon specific historical and aesthetic contexts. My work is informed by old maps, architectural garden plans, and various classification systems such as taxonomic structures in evolutionary biology and computer databases, and explores their hierarchy and potential for unpredictability, which to me is an intriguing part of art-making process. In the various media that I work in (works on paper, digital media) the role of artist can be conflated with the role of researcher. I am interested in the representational process of relic-making, which includes both physical and digital artifacts. As reality and simulation become more and more inextricable in post-industrial culture, my work explores the gaps and liminal spaces between accepted modes of classification and new ways of seeing that challenge their hierarchy. Ideally, I like to think of my work as a shifting stage for the clash between human desire for natural order and the no less persistent allure of utopia.