Vienna Time

Interview with Julia Belova

• Liudmila Kirsanova • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Baroque monsters, porcelain sculpture, queer bodies, migrant identities 


What If The Holiest Body Is A Monster?

A monster at the altar changes how you see the sacred. We sit down with Vienna-based sculptor Julia Belova to trace how porcelain, silicone, latex, and candy-bright surfaces grow into new bodies that are at once inviting and unsettling. Rooted in a lifelong fascination with Baroque intensity, Julia uses excess, ornament, and movement to question who gets to decide what is holy, desirable, or human. The conversation opens up the architecture of power—religion, patriarchy, and the gaze—and asks how a queer practice can reclaim spectacle without surrendering agency.

Julia brings us inside her largest project to date, Monstrum Sacrum, installed in the historic church Dominikanerkirche in Krems. She explains how the sculptures engage the site and how process videos hung like icon doors, bridge Orthodox memory with a Catholic setting. Scale becomes a statement of existence: a queer, migrant body that takes up space without apology. We talk about masks, visibility, and why hybridity—human, animal, alien—captures the migrant feeling of being seen and mis-seen at once.

Across the hour, we unpack how femininity, sensuality, and fluid gendered energies live in abstraction. Julia resists labels while drawing from the female body’s pleasures and strengths, crafting forms that suggest folds and flowers without pinning them down. The result is a practice that turns beauty into a question: is the sweetest surface a lure or a shield? By reframing Baroque exuberance through a queer lens, Julia finds spirituality not in purity but in honesty—the courage to show all parts, even the monstrous ones, as worthy of reverence.

If this conversation shifts how you see sacred spaces, sculpture, or the bodies we deem acceptable, share it with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss our next deep dive.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Hi, it's Vienna Time with Liudmila Kirsanova. For my podcast, I interview artists who live and work in Vienna, a place both grandly old and vivaciously young. Whether my guests were born here, chose, or happen to be here, I'm keen on giving voices and sharing stories of very different artists belonging with different traditions and generations. I do gravitate towards profound interviews rather than sketches and brief questionnaires, and that's why you'll find here in-depth talks embracing both professional and personal insights. Considering my curatorial practice, I've been meeting extraordinary artists and witnessing wonderful art projects that no doubt will go down the history. And now I'm eager to share it with you to give an inside look at the local art scene, which is as vibrant and diverse as personalities creating it. Let's explore and celebrate it together. And today, my guest is Julia Belova. Hello Julia . Hi Liudmila. Julia is an artist, is a visual artist who works primarily with sculpture. And when we talk about sculpture in case of Julia's artwork, we must think about porcelain, about ceramics, about all the variety of interesting materials like wox and soap and recently latex. And Julia deals with issues of corporeality, sensuality, in particular which concerns queer body. And here we come to this ambiguity of Julia's sculpture, which balances between being attractive and disgusting, of being angelic but also demonic, monstrous at the same time. We have this appealing, very candy-like colors like pinks and blues and violets, but at the same time, we have this non-human sprouts of any alien buddy you could imagine. And today I would like to talk with you about these juxtapositions that you embrace in your body of work and about how you deal with these ideas of sensuality, corporeality, queerness, and human, non-human, how you express this complexity in your objects. And we shall talk also about the materiality of your sculptures and how you work with space. I think this question was asked so many times whenever you talk to anyone about your art, but also in your artist statement on your webpage, you clearly state your interest in Baroque, in Baroque aesthetic. And I would like to ask, why are you interested in Baroque aesthetic? And what do you see there?

Julia Belova:

What inspires you? For me, uh it is about sexuality, corporeality of this aesthetic, and uh it's still relevant today, I should say, because it was about hierarchy always, about about social structure and about religion a lot. Funny thing for me is that principally everything what was forbidden in the church, Baroque presents like unconsciously, I think, like something really funny, funny and uh available. Like, no, it's okay, but religion says it's not. But at the same time, unconsciously they talk differently. It's totally okay to be queer, I don't know, to have uh sexual thoughts and so on.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Vienna is like a perfect place for a person who loves Baroque. You're surrounded here by so much Baroque. So was it uh your intentional choice to come to this Baroque setting to create your art and be inspired on a daily basis?

Julia Belova:

It happens spontaneously, as almost everything in my life. And you're right, Vienna is full of Baroque aesthetic and uh wonderful examples of uh amazing Baroque sculptures. For example, uh Schonbrunn, my favorite place in Vienna. And sometimes I make joke that this is a huge compensation of this city for rudeness. Just just beauty.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Also, when we think about Baroque, of course, the first things that come to our mind is this richness, almost excessiveness of details, of shapes, everything is so voluptuous and kind of decorated and kind of really pompous. It's such an intense aesthetic. And how do you work with Baroque together with queerness, together with queer body? I'm really interested in this constellation that you create.

Julia Belova:

This is this aesthetic is pretty paterhal, and um for me it was uh interesting to review this absolutistic era and uh look at it through the lens of new knowledges and new feelings about hierarchy, about body, about corporeality. And um as a queer person I always try to look at the corporeality of this era with my shapes and with my topics and sculpture language, I try to rethink corporeality of the Baroque era. In a way I can imagine it, and in a way I can feel sexuality as a queer person, as in a way, how can I represent bodiness without all of these patriarchal views on it?

Liudmila Kirsanova:

And at the same time, you really inherit this excessiveness, this extravagance of Baroque aesthetics, I believe, because they're always full of details, materials, they really occupy the space and this feeling of a body that's kind of exploding, kind of sprouting out, a body that is really on the verge of being human and non-human. You have this motive of tentacles. Can we talk about the shapes, about the forms? Because do they come from an animalistic world?

Julia Belova:

Do they come from any ideas of an alien body? As a huge fan of Baroque, I think there is so much possibilities in this language, how to express emotions and queerness and also different different different signs you can express. Like, for example, I like this idea that I got from Vienna artists, Baroque artists, to make humans and animals together as a one creature. And I thought it could be really interesting to have this connection with my personal story as a migrant, how I feel sometimes being a queer artist in Vienna with Russian background. Sometimes I feel myself a little bit like this creature because I can be observed as a human sometimes, but sometimes like something that creates different feelings, how I see it, and it's a popular topic among migrants, and it's not so easy sometimes to feel really like a human 100%. That's why I think creating these strange bodies, androgen bodies with animal parts with a little bit strange colours. It's kind of also therapy for me to accept myself in a new reality that I chose as the artist to have this freedom to create everything I want. I chose this life being a little bit monster in here among other monsters and trying, trying year for year to find my place among other realities because everyone comes here with his or her own story and this all makes sometimes everything a little bit easier or complicated, so it's it's a pretty difficult way. But I think people who chose being artists in another culture with another language, they are not monsters but also heroes.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

So does it mean that also these are self-portraits in a way? Yes. Your sculptures they are.

Julia Belova:

Yes, and I also notice sometimes that everything that can look attractive from the first side can be different in a while, and you can see that it's not so nice at all now, and differently. If you see something that scares you, with the time you will understand no, this is perfect what you need. This is the kindest thing you met, you know? It's always about these masks everyone is wearing now, and you never know who is behind this mask. And this is so baroque, I think.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Even this is like a masquerade, it's very baroque, true. Yes, yes.

Julia Belova:

And what is it monster? Is it really so scary? Or this is sometimes monsters can be best friends. For example, people who look like people without tentacles can be not so nice with you. So you never know. It's always a game every day.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

I mean, your sculptures they really have this quality that they sort of occupy this space that they have they have this very strong presence in the space. And now when you're talking about your own migrant experience, it's also a little bit of a statement. I exist, yes, I come to this place, I have this tentacles. You can like them or you can fear of them, right? So it's also a bit kind of a personal story of entering the space and claiming the space yours. Do I get it right?

Julia Belova:

Absolutely, absolutely, yes, because uh unconsciously I realized it in the end now in this um church project when I created a huge monster. Then I realized I really want to be visible, I really want to be big because I am big, but sometimes I feel well enough to present it, to show it.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Can you tell me more please about this solo show that you did in Krems in Dominicana Kirch?

Julia Belova:

It was the biggest project now for me. The most difficult part was of course this monster. For me it was also a collective anxiety feeling that we all have now. It should be something really huge and scary, but also that would work with the space really good because it was so important to match colours, shapes, and I was so inspired by the charge pictures on the walls and charge architecture. I used some of the elements for this uh monster, like for example, shell on the top has uh the same shape like roof of the charge. And I also made chandeliers six, and they all like one family. It was so stressful for me that I couldn't think uh during the day about my project. But woking up in the night and Anna, it should be like this. Anna, I should try something different. It was so crazy. Now I'm still trying to got my sleep back because it's still going, it's so difficult. But it was really not only about exhibition, it was my trip, personal trip to this process, to this dream, because I was dreaming about this project, and I never expected I will get it so soon. I was 33 when I got it, and it was like, oh Jesus age, interesting. And I it's it's a lot about symbols, a lot about my own expectations from what I want to make. Uh and I always had this idea, um, Saint Petersburg, that I need an exhibition in a church. I need it because uh churches for me are like huge sculptures, even houses full filled with art, just brilliant art. And for me it's a huge possibility, of course, uh to do something in this historical uh building.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

At the place where the sculpture was positioned used to be an altar. So you exhibit your let me call it pretty monster in the altar of the church.

Julia Belova:

Yes. And there was only one possibility for me where I could see this monster because altar is the ultimate part of the church, and when you enter the door, the first thing you see is three screens with videos with the processes of creation, where I work with metal, with silicon and with porcelain, three parts, and they placed like orthodox icons, like little doors. It was also a reference for my Russian background as a person who was grown in orthodox culture. It was so important for me to build this bridge between Catholic culture and orthodox culture, and that's what I tried to do in this exhibition, maybe not so obviously, but I always explain it in excursions and so on.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

I mean, I understand that you already said that Baroque aesthetics is very much connected to also religious life and religious culture. But now you also mentioned that it was important for you to breach also orthodox culture as your background culture with so do you so are you interested also in religion as a project or only as an aesthetical moment?

Julia Belova:

Yes, I uh realized it in the process because uh my first project ten years ago was uh just truly inspired by Baroque Aesthetic. And now with the time I realized it was not spontaneously. I discovered in myself pretty strong religion thoughts. I mean existential thoughts. I would not say this is that religion or that religion. It's just ideas about having something that we can't reach being alive.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

And at the same time, relationship between church and any religion and queerness is quite a complex thing.

Julia Belova:

Absolutely. That's the strange and maybe conflict thing, because yeah, sometimes we can be everything queer and at the same time pretty religious, but it doesn't mean that we have to have all of this part as a conflict. But I just believe what I can feel, and it's not definitely everything what I only can see or I can understand. Sometimes the most powerful things are that we can't can't understand. It helps me, it supports me every day, I think.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Julia, I just cannot put my head around it because when I look at your art, I think of you as being like the brettest bread in a very good sense. Like you have this really your melting bows, your tentacles, this eroticism and sensuality, and then you're sitting now in front of me, and we are going towards religion, we are going towards souls, we are going towards these thoughts about eternity. And can you maybe give me a way how I may connect the form of your art? And I mean, of course it's now my duty, right? To to build this connection, but maybe you can guide me through because you choose really these shapes that are kind of very pop, you know. I mean, in a very good sense of this meaning, they are very attractive, they are very bright, they're very eye-catchy, uh bright things that immediately kind of make this statical friction. But at the same time, you talk to me about such deep and serious topics.

Julia Belova:

I think without these deep topics it would be impossible to be so plain. You know, I think the problem is that maybe not it's it's not a problem, but I don't absorb it as disrespect. For example, when we talk about religion, I see it as diversity, and as I allowed myself to believe in something really deep and really powerful, and at the same time I allowed myself to not be agreed with what religion suggests us as religion. Because we have stereotypes about what is holy and what is not, and I decide maybe a little bit differently what is holy for me, because for me, holy is uh just just to be yourself and just just just show who you are, to know yourself better. This is our way to know yourself better, and maybe through this bolt motives I have more connection to myself and to other than if I would make something really, really clean. Maybe it's more fair to show also a little bit demonic parts of yourself. It's more about religion for me than to show only white sides.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

So we should add also this idea of holy body to all the bodies we've already discussed concerning your work. So we have queer body, monstrous, beautiful, angelic, demonic, but now you said it holybody, right? So so your monster there in the altar of the Dominicana Kirche is also a holy body for you.

Julia Belova:

In the concept of this uh exhibition in the church, of course, I thought a lot about uh holybody holiness, what is uh what is sanctus and and so on.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Because say it out loud, what was the title of the exhibition?

Julia Belova:

A monstrum sacrum. This is not my first monster, but biggest one. I have to go further and further because uh have this little problem when I make an exhibition, I'm happy about it maybe I don't know, maybe one week. And then I started to think, no, I have to I have to do it better. I can better, I can make it differently. Of course I love all of my sculptures, like my children. I I really really love all my monsters, uh like my little christrages, my little pieces. Uh it was millennial joke about christrages. Yeah, but now I feel like I really want to to make it differently and more baroque, more sexual, more bold.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

So bolder, even bolder, really.

Julia Belova:

Yeah, because uh one of my parts, this bold one, needs needs to needs to be presented. Yeah. Definitely, because this is really true. This is true. Uh yeah, I think this part helps me just survive. I love this part.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Now you're sad that uh they're like children, but you also like they have protective power for you. That's what I heard from what you said, no? That they kind of also guard you, that they kind of protect you. Your sculptures. Like tatems, or yeah. Um, I have more parenting feelings about so you parent them, not they kind of guide, assist, um, help you.

Julia Belova:

I have like I got power from like a flow from somewhere, and then I having this power, I have possibility to let my different parts to be alive, to let my monsters go to the world and to be spritted around. I like this idea that I can exist given and yeah, having a lot of parts of me. Now I have these associations just spontaneously. It's also refers to religion because Jesus had a lot of parts. That parts are everywhere, and sanctus, sancts. Saints also had these parts, and you if you visit a Catholic Church on or even Russian church, I think we we all have this tradition of parts. And maybe sculptures are also kind of parts that can bring power or something or destroy, I don't know. They these parts can build their own connections to people. I believe in it. I don't know, but I I hope. It's always about reflections, about being brave and also about having patience. And like everything always for me, it refers also to this religion story about creating a world.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

You have a deadline, you have seven deadline for creating a world.

Julia Belova:

You know it's everything comes to this story at the end, yeah? I feel it.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

You see, uh, we are still coming back to uh this really not only religious but to these sacral ideas, this sacrality. We are kind of going around these ideas of something mysterious, something unspoken, even spiritual. I still have to think about these like two different parts uh uh that are all come together in you as persona and also in your artwork. I'm kind of we are talking and I'm I try to bind them, I try to connect them to see. And but let's talk about this boldness. I really like now to know more about this bold part because your boldness is a very erotic boldness. You have this very bold representation, I would say even manifestation of female body, of female sexuality, and of female corporeal joy.

Julia Belova:

I I think now I started to understand how to answer this question because I uh was surrounded since childhood by a really patriarchal system. My family is really really patriarchal. Like this is culture. It is like it is, and I struggled it a lot with um as even as a child, as I remember now, I was always a little angry person and so lonely in these thoughts that no, it's not fair. Like, for example, my grandfather sometimes told me, Julia, you should you should uh know that your little brother is smarter because he is a boy. But I looked at him and told him, But you know that it's not true. I'm so smart. Why why why do you tell me uh something like this? And it was like the whole my growing, I was always confronting with different situations. Someone tried to to uh tell me what to do, how to do, how I should look like it was from everywhere. You should go with a straight uh back, you should go not like this, or you should not uh wear these things. You look like homeless, you had strange style, you are a girl. And I got so much uh this of these comments, and somehow it developed um something like a little rebellion in in even even not little one, big one, big rebellion. We can see it's not a little one. Yes. I I think this part, I always wanted to say, no, I am good enough, I am talented, I am smart, and I I should I had to tell it to myself as well to protect myself. But because it was always mixed signals, yeah. Of course, people supported me as a child as well, like, oh, you are so you you did it so well and so on. But it was not enough, it was always mixed with these signals, like you will find the man and he will pay for you. One of my ideas, great ideas, was as soon as possible to be independent financially, and I did it as soon as I could. And it was like my first point. I should organize my life so like I'm I'm independent. And I did it, and it got me a lot of power. So now we come to this yeah, power. What is power? Is it us or is it God? Or what is God? It's always about this different sides of everything. And we can come always to the religion, to feminism, to yourself, to believe in God, in yourself, in soul. It's mix it mixed uh everything is mixed.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

How you also taught about this hybrid creatures or chimeras who integrate parts of different other creatures, whether insects, marine creatures, divine creatures, animals, humans, and then it's kind of this mythology of some new body being born, of some new corporality being born, which is definitely female. Absolutely, right? It's kind of it's a kind of maybe a new femininity, so it's coming from this uh feminine desires, feminine passions, feminine sexuality, female corporality, and then it evolves to some new mythological creature.

Julia Belova:

Yeah, because I think men enjoyed female body too long. And uh I think it's time finally to be focused on the women's body not as a object but as something s absolutely separated from expectations, like something that decides yourself and can enjoy also beauty of bodies, not being object but being who can decide who can enjoy.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

And how do you exactly work with female body? How do you work with the representation of female body?

Julia Belova:

I don't really think how to how to present uh female body now. No, I I just I just have a lot of associations and uh abstract pictures in my head, and when I start making something, I just realize this is really inspired by by by something that's not phallic. You know what I mean? Just opposite. It's just I also not really not focusing on the only female body or male body. I just try to explain what is corporality for me, how I feel it, how sexual it can be or not sexual. It's mostly about intuitively uh searching of this body. I never uh used labels like this is only women or this is only men. I don't make these differences. It's important as a protest for me against this structure. This is male, this is female. I like this uh fluidity, but in my case, somehow this fluidity based on my preferences and this is female. I really am a huge fan of uh everything that can remain female body. This is so beautiful and inspiring, just and can be also abstract, but you can feel it somehow. It's not only about always picturing vagina everywhere. No, I like this little moments you can show it a little bit, and now you can create this picture in your head by yourself. Maybe this is vagina or maybe it's flower. I don't know. I like this not being so exact, but you always know what is it. That's interesting.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

And if we talk about energies and this female energy in your sculptures, it absorbs both this boldness, this action. It's an Active female power, but at the same time, it's very resting in itself power. It's also kind of this rest of a body that maybe is resting from that male gaze, that resting from being not phallic finally, that resting in being itself, in being female, and embracing this femininity of one's own presence, being corporality, and so on. So it's both this. I feel this action of female energy and this nesting, resting, this kind of relaxation of a body. It also interesting how these two again polar things come very well together in your artworks.

Julia Belova:

Yeah, you explained it so well, even better as that as I could explain it. It's really, it's really true. It's both. I really don't like that uh some of qualities like it's men, male quality, or this is uh only women quality.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Julia, thank you very much for the talk today. It was very surprising now to open up your personality today, because before this interview, I'd known you only through your art, uh through your body of work, and now I know more about you as a person. And I must say that your perspective, the way how you talked about your art today, really this new way how to understand, to perceive, to reflect on what you do as an artist, because this boldness, maybe that's because it's so bright and appealing, and it's kind of you can just stay with it, and it's already enough, I believe. But today you also give this very spiritual, this mythological, this very other perspective about us being souls, about us beyond gender, about us as internal creatures. I also like that you work with this kitsch, pop, bright references using this very contemporary vocabulary, visual vocabulary, but then you go and try to communicate through it this very internal thing things and feelings and ideas that we as humanity uh have been thinking through our whole history, and this idea of still because it was bitter the way you talked about certain things growing up as a girl, growing up as a queer girl in Russia, but still this how you try to find this connection with your past self, with your culture, with your family's culture, and to go not only through a conflict, but how you say to bridge, how to bridge this experience with that experience and really recreate your own self within this reality that you find yourself in right now. And I now, but you really gave a very new perspective. So now when I go and see your new work, I think I would approach them differently, and I would also think about this new ideas that you uh brought in today, about this not only gender fluidity, but this fluidity of our being, this fluidity, this kind of traveling, this journey of discovery, not only corporality, but also the way how we are, right? The way how we present and manifest ourselves. And it's still very interesting how Baroque and Baroque aesthetics uh is keep giving you this impulse for creation.

Julia Belova:

Thank you so much. Hearing you, I thought about uh so much things that I could add and I could endlessly discuss religion.

Liudmila Kirsanova:

Thank you so much, and now you leave us with this idea of uh Harley, monstrous buddy who starts from being female and then opening up to something else, towards something else. I really like it. Thank you.

Julia Belova:

Uh thank you, Ludmila. It was a pleasure to talk to you today.