School of Fine Art Sculpture & Environmental Art
Kristina Haritonova
I am a Latvian artist based in Scotland, working primarily in sculpture using materials like metal, wood, and ceramics. I create surreal sculptures, with ideas emerging from asking, ‘What if?” I experiment with unexpected combinations of human body parts and objects to challenge how we think about identity and existence.
Through my work, I am researching how society affects and influences individuals. I examine the ways people mask their true selves to conform to societal expectations, exploring themes of identity, emotion, and the universal experiences that make us human.
I strive to create works of quality, drawing inspiration from the classical masters of past centuries. I see my art as a quiet rebellion against a culture that values mass consumption over individuality. Natural and traditional materials are central to my process. I prefer earthy tones and often leave materials in their raw form to let them speak for themselves, revealing their natural beauty and connection to the world around us.
Through my art, I want to invite people to reflect on the human condition, our fears, desires, and the complex relationship between self and society. While my work may seem surreal at first glance, it’s ultimately about connecting with what lies beneath the surface: our shared humanity.
Project
A Journey to Nowhere
Being an immigrant is a strange, in-between feeling. I no longer feel fully at home in the place I come from—but in the country where I now live, I am not yet home either. I exist in a liminal space: between languages, between landscapes, between ideas of belonging.
In this work, I return to the image of the snail—a creature that carries its home wherever it goes. I find comfort in that metaphor. Like the snail, I carry pieces of my home with me, but they are not always visible. They are embedded in memory, in objects, in rituals.
One of my earliest memories is of the glass-fronted cabinet in my grandmother’s apartment. Inside stood a pristine tea set—too precious to be used, always waiting for a “special occasion” that never came. This collecting of beautiful things, untouched and protected, was a quiet inheritance from the Soviet past, when scarcity made people gather and preserve what they could.
For me, collecting objects is like collecting memories. Unlike photographs, which flatten time into images, an object holds the weight of emotion. I often find myself in charity shops, stumbling upon the exact same tea set from my childhood. Once a symbol of status, now it sits dusty and forgotten on a discount shelf. Yet every time I see it, I am transported back—to the old post-Soviet apartment with the carpet on the wall, the warm July sun streaming through the window, my grandmother cooking porridge in the kitchen.
Since leaving my home country at 18, I’ve moved across five different cities in the UK. Each time, I looked not just for shelter, but for a feeling of home—that sense of warmth and rootedness I remembered from my childhood. But as time passed, I began to wonder: have I forgotten what “home” feels like? Are memories enough? Or do I need to build that feeling again, piece by piece, collecting new objects, new rituals, and new memories as carefully as placing porcelain behind glass?
This work is a meditation on memory, repair, and the search for belonging.
It is a home—not fixed in place, but assembled in parts.
To buy a snail visit:
https://kristinaharitonova.com/shop
