NATALYA MOUGENOT

To the one who may one day live with my work—thank you for taking the time to discover the story behind it

My name is Natalya Mougenot, and I am a contemporary artist shaped by a life between cultures, memories, and constant transformation.

I was born in 1981 in Pavlodar, a city in northeastern Kazakhstan, at a time when it was still part of the Soviet Union. I am an only child, and I grew up deeply loved by my parents, who gave me everything they could in this life—most importantly love, but also a strong education and a sense of stability that became the foundation of who I am today.

I grew up in a world made of many layers—Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Tatars, Ukrainians—all sharing the same spaces, languages, and everyday life. Without knowing it then, I was already learning something essential: that identity is never singular, and that beauty often lives in diversity.

My childhood school years, however, were marked by uniformity. Everyone dressed the same, moved through the same system, and was expected to fit into a collective identity. Even as a child, I felt a quiet resistance to this idea of sameness. That tension became one of the earliest roots of my artistic vision—the desire to express what is unique, internal, and unrepeatable.

At the center of my life was my grandmother, who raised me and shaped my values. She passed away when I was 22, and her absence changed me profoundly. She taught me authenticity, responsibility, independence as a woman, and the importance of standing firmly in one’s own truth. Her death, caused by cancer, left a deep mark on me, and it remains a subject I approach with great sensitivity.

Before becoming an artist, I explored music and photography—early forms of expression that helped me translate emotions into images and sound. Later, I studied International Relations and Law in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, driven by curiosity about systems, people, and the wider world. That intellectual path eventually led me to France in 2003, a turning point that changed everything.

Arriving in France meant starting from zero—language, culture, identity. Nothing was familiar. But it was also a moment of reinvention. I learned to live between worlds, rather than belonging to just one. Over time, Lyon became my home, a place where I slowly rebuilt myself and allowed new versions of who I am to emerge.

My personal life has also been marked by deep transformation. I became a mother, I experienced marriage, and later went through a long and difficult divorce finalized in 2017. That period was not only painful but also profoundly reshaping. It forced me into silence, reflection, and ultimately into a process of rebuilding my identity from within.

It was during this time that I discovered painting.

What began as a form of survival quickly became a necessity. I joined a local art class, not with ambition, but with the need to breathe again. In painting, I found a space where nothing had to be explained. Color, texture, and gesture became a language for what words could not hold—grief, strength, fragility, and hope.

Step by step, painting became my voice.

Over time, I began to develop my own artistic language. I explored different techniques, joined online art communities, and connected with other artists who encouraged me to continue. What started as a personal refuge gradually became a professional path. I began exhibiting my work, sharing it with collectors and galleries, and allowing it to exist beyond me.

Today, my artworks are part of private collections across the United States, Australia, Europe, and Kazakhstan. Each piece carries fragments of my journey, yet once it leaves my studio, it begins a new life with the person who lives with it.

My work is deeply connected to my experience as a woman. I explore identity, transformation, emotional resilience, and the complexity of modern femininity—the ability to exist in multiple roles at once: mother, creator, professional, individual. I do not idealize women in my work; I portray them as they are—layered, strong, vulnerable, evolving.

In 2023, I worked closely with my art mentor Dasha Pogodina, whose guidance helped me refine my artistic direction and trust my intuition more deeply. Alongside painting, photography has also become an essential part of my practice. It allows me to observe the world with a different kind of attention—capturing quiet, poetic moments that often become the seed of future paintings.

Living in France since 2003 has taught me that identity is not something fixed, but something constantly in motion. I carry Kazakhstan and Russia within me, but I also belong to France. These layers do not cancel each other—they coexist, overlap, and enrich one another. Lyon, with its light, rhythm, and history, has become the place where these identities meet.

Today, I see myself as both artist and witness. My work is not about creating answers, but about expressing lived experience—its contradictions, its ruptures, and its beauty.

Above all, I value authenticity and honesty in life and in art. I believe people always feel what is true and what is not; in life as in canvas, truth is something that cannot be disguised—it always reveals itself in the end.