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Lira Kay was born in St Petersburg. Before moving to England, as well as studying Art, she graduated as a psychologist and teacher in Estonia and also worked for a local television company as a news reporter and presenter.

She has actively participated in several art projects, including workshops, teaching Art and internationally exhibiting in contemporary art galleries and museums. Lira Kay is represented by Marseille Project Gallery and ARTFEM.TV. Her works belong to many private collections worldwide as well as to collection of Narva Museum in Estonia.

She had won prestigious Regional Prize at The Discerning Eye Exhibition at The Mall Gallery in 2005 in London, UK.

Had been working in Kensington and Chelsea College studios in 2006-2007 and studied mixed media painting and film making in Central Saint Martins college of Art and Design, London.

From 2008 lived in Marseille, France and ran a  Marseille Project Gallery  curating international art exhibitions and film screenings.

In 2011 moved to Boston, MA, United States.

Lira Kay films have been frequently screened in Europe and USA. The latest screenings as part of ARTFEM.TV include Open Video Conference, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, USA, 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Germany, IX Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Manizales, Colombia and Dimension Show at Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco, CA

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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Lira Kay’s work is rooted in deep reflectiveness, her educational background includes the study of Psychology, Anthropology and Visionary Art. The viewer will be struck by the boldness and freedom of her canvases. Her images show a vibrant appreciation of the power of color to communicate energy. Her work is largely intuitive, and often centers on archetypal images, acting like mandalas, providing a meditative focus for the viewer.

Currently Lira is working on series of large monochrome drawings exploring shamanic nature of art. Lira uses unique technique: charcoal with oil medium on canvas and board. She makes her work look almost like prehistoric cave paintings.  She examines the belief that satiating images with engrossed sturdy thought can indeed direct reality. Inspired by works of Jung, C. Lévi-Strauss, Kandinsky, Arp and Miro and André Masson’s experiments with automatic drawing Lira Kay engages in unconventional methods in order to test the realness of the original principles of art.

From 2008 Lira Kay mostly concentrates on filmmaking. She has been working on

series of video and sound installations, documentaries, short films, animation

and music videos. Her short films are mostly reflections on fundamental

experiences and feelings. Lira believes in universality of human kind, in connection

of all in appreciation and experience of life.

Lira creates original music for most of her films and sometimes collaborates

with other contemporary musicians. Typically as well as embracing surrounding

sounds into the peace she would combine invented languages with layers of filtered

vocals to create a magical dream-like effect.

She considers sound to be very important part of conceptual representation. In

some films she uses lack of sound, silence to intensify the experience. Her

cinematographic style can be recognized like her paintings by often being strikingly

beautiful and visually memorable.