Siberian Artist Knitted With Giant Needles Portraits Of Freud, Gagarin And Putin

Natasha Yudina, the artist: "Well, it’s cold in Siberia, that’s true. Most of the time we have winter, which lasts and lasts. The climate is extremely continental. There is a great need for everything warm, dear and cozy. Everyone needs to walk in a sweater. That’s where my knitting comes from. The first thing I’d knitted was a Kremlin wall. It was a background for the miniature toylike Kremlin created on a 3D printer. It's a metaphor for the homeland, like the good old sweater you keep wearing all your life until the end.

I also knitted my grandmother. She has never been in Moscow. I decided to knit her portrait and bring it to Moscow, thus having materialized grandmother's dream.

Then I knitted Gagarin, president Putin and Santa Claus. This is the triptych called "The Sweater's Circumincession". It is something of a local "Icon shelf", like my dad has in the village: a calendar with a head’s of administration portrait, the Blessed Virgin and the old faded Gagarin postcard.

There is also Freud, which I gifted to a psychology school. They opened a psychological center in in the Russian province the village. I think they also have lack of warmth over there. So let psychologists get warm from knitted Freud".

More info: natasha-yudina.wix.com