My story is the result of a mix between ex URSS and Cuba.
I was born in Cuba, of a Russian mother, and a Cuban father, on March 17th 1986, shortly before URSS collapses.
I grew there until I was ten, and then I left to live with my mother in Moscow, where I began studies of drawing in 1999.
In 2002, I went back to Havana, Cuba, to see my father and his family and to continue my studies of plastic arts in the Instituto Superior de ARTE: ISA, as well.
At the end of my program of studies in 2008, I left again my birth country to settle down in Madrid as an independent artist, financing my artworks with little jobs.
Finally, since 2011, I live in Paris, and I study Cinema at ESRA (College of Audio visual Realisation) there.
My work is the product of a cultural mix, engraved by nostalgia, reincarnated on real images.
I believe that it is important to take into account the story and life of the artist to understand where comes from his questionings.
The life showed me that there is no predefined and bounded space.
What made me undertake studies around the visual arts is my way of life stretched between drastically opposite geographical places.
I was in a constant research for my own space
It would seem evident to consider me as a Cuban, because this country is my place of birth.
Nevertheless, I feel for a long time closer to Russia. I feel Moscow, because it’s where I lived all my adolescence.
Since my youngest age, Art interests me, but it is in Moscow where I realized that it was my vocation.
Coming from a country witch had erased communism like Russia, to Cuba when I was 17 been a shock for me.
It produced a rough change in my way of thinking, in the concepts that I had built myself.
The study of fine arts (School of Fine Arts) in Cuba allows living a magnificent experience for any creator. They allow realizing that even without any average material, it is possible to create and to be happy.
Having developed a solid academic and artistic base, and noticing the rigidity and the opposition to progress of this country, I made the decision to join Europe and to settle in Spain.
Regrettably, I quickly realized that I didn’t felt in connection culturally.
So, taking advantage of the legal privilege to be able to travel through the European community, I made the decision to go in Paris, to study the cinema. Since then, I follow the teachings of a school (ESRA) to develop my ideas with brightness, always keeping in my mind my origins and keeping looking for this for space of freedom which, I believe, exists only through the art.
Yana Maria Parrado Parrado
O Masha Yaborskaya, from the Russian name of my mother.
