Bulgun Suchinova was born in Kalmykia, Russia in 1987. She graduated from the Pirogov Medical University in Moscow in 2010 and subsequently worked as a laboratory scientist in oncological diagnostics. Years of therapy sparked her interest in psychology and artistic expression. Bulgun studied at the Moscow Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama and qualified as a Gestalt Therapist in 2017. In 2017/18 she studied at the "DocDocDoc" School of Modern Photography in Saint Petersburg. Her work is inspired by reflections on personal, family, and collective experience, and the history of the Kalmyk ethnic group. Today Bulgun lives and practises as a counsellor in London

Contacts
email: b.suchinova@gmail.com

Synthillation

I arrived in adulthood with a collection of childhood traumas, a sense of inferiority, and the belief that I must prove myself useful to humankind to justify my presence in this world. Burdened with this existential contract, I was plagued by stifling feelings of shame, guilt, and self-loathing for not being as good as I was supposed to be.
I became a laboratory scientist and dedicated myself to the fight against cancer. I was fighting for the lives of others, but didn't really feel alive myself. Lovelessness births Nothingness.
Like a medieval alchemist, I want to bring inanimate matter to life. I believe that our bodies carry the memory of everything we have experienced, so I use cells from my body in my experiments. I manipulate my passport photograph, the image that documents my seemingly unchangeable identity in this world.
Using microscope, chemistry, and camera, I relive painful memories and find a place for them in my current self: my skin burns with shame, I'm immersed in feelings of isolation, swallowed pain rises and burns again like acid. Blood boils with repressed rage, tears grow into crystals. Somewhere there, at the very bottom of anxiety and fear, another self is silently looking at me, and I'm contemplating her.
Shame, guilt, fear, and loneliness synthesise into new images, are distilled into visual poetry and revitalise me.