</odra> introduces Diana Kozlova, a Lithuanian artist whose work reveals a fascination with the boundaries between the seen and the felt, the real and the surreal. With an impressive portfolio of exhibitions across the UK, India, Georgia, Serbia, Lithuania, and Russia, she focuses on the human figure, whose image oscillates between precision and diffusion.

Born in 1991, Diana manifested her passion for creativity from early childhood. Her first professional training began at the age of 10 when she entered a local drawing studio in her native Vilnius. In 2007, she graduated from the Justinas Vienožinskis Art School with a diploma focused on graphics. A couple of years later, she took a six-month course in artistic photography. By the age of 20, when she began studying at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, she was already an aspiring multidisciplinary artist with a keen eye for detail and a profound interest in graphics, photography, and painting. At the same time, she started to broaden her artistic horizons by extensively traveling and capturing unique locations and expressions of human emotions. Her visual savviness grew even stronger while she was photographing exhibitions of fellow Lithuanian artists.

By 2023, with several group and solo exhibitions behind her, she had gained recognition as one of the best photographers in Vilnius. The best starting point to soak into Kozlova’s art is her photographs taken at the turn of the late 2010s and early 2020s that are showing a deep consideration for realistic tradition with a pinch of surreal aesthetics. A series of her photos taken in Madeira bring to mind Henri Cartier-Bresson with his subtle cityscapes often half-hidden under a shroud of mist. In Kozlova’s work, the surreal atmosphere is heightened by poetic titles (“Veil of the Old Forest” or “Wanderers in the Fog”). As the artist puts it herself, these photographs tend to capture reality, but at the same time they are blurring the boundaries between the tangible and ephemeral, creating a sense of mystery. The ancient trees dissolving into the fog turn into thin silhouettes, a distant memory of themselves.

Much like Cartier-Bresson, whose oeuvre was far from limited by poetically misty landscapes, Kozlova is also profoundly interested in human nature. But if the French master was primarily pursuing spontaneous moments of life, Kozlova aims to capture moments of genuine human emotions. For example, in 2024, she participated in the “Human” group photo exhibition in Tbilisi with a series of photographs titled “Shades of Happiness” taken from 2020 to 2022. One of the photos — “Tired but Happy” — emanates serene calmness (the relaxed posture, the faint smile); the other — “Are you Happy” — strikes the viewer with its direct and unequivocal approach (the pointing finger, the intense gaze). Though radically different in their mood, still, both of them are similar in their frankness. When it comes to Madeira landscapes, the fog works as a thin veil between the viewer and the view, and one has to resist the phantom urge to brush it off. But when it comes to portraits, the very same role is played by the print itself that separates one human being from another.

In their entirety, these two types of photos lead to a ‘Mapplethorpe effect’ when exceedingly sensual images of flowers soften up the effect of his sometimes painfully brutal portraits and images of human bodies, while the latter add up to the former’s sexuality.

The different photographic works by Kozlova complement each other in a similar way, so that with some time you will start to see human features in landscapes, much as it happens in a viral frame from “The Godfather” when Don Corleone’s mustache turns into a tree. This effect reaches its peak moment in Kozlova’s recent works shown at the “Blur” group exhibition in Tbilisi in 2024. With works like “Lost” she fuses two approaches together: a human emotion is shown through a blurred image of a human body.  

The same motifs of visual obstacles that must be overcome in order to see things clearly recur in Kozlova’s work in other mediums. In her 2021 painting titled “Despiration” a male figure demonstrates its struggle only with the tense muscles of his back, while the face is turned away. An earlier piece titled “Echo” (2016) explores the fading traces of identity trapped behind barriers.

And “The Blind Sage” drawing from 2012 shows a man who is facing the viewer but is covering his eyes with one hand. No matter what medium or technique, Diana Kozlova keeps exploring the possibilities of inner vision using a broad palette of methods to create sincere images.

Across photography, painting, and drawing, Kozlova’s art consistently invites viewers to look beyond the surface. Her exploration of perception — through fog, blur, or obscured identity — challenges viewers to engage more deeply with the emotional layers of her subjects.