Veronika Yemelyanova is an interdisciplinary artist and film director working across performance and cinematic storytelling. Engaging with psychoanalysis, the structures of modern institutions and historical research, Yemelyanova explores themes of satire and irony, ecstasy and agony, and feelings that one may fear or suppress. Her work does not offer resolution. Instead, it invites the viewer into a state of questioning, where full spectrum of emotions and subconscious intersect.

In conversation with TEMPTRESS, Veronika reflects on her 2023 performance in Montreal as a state of being stuck — between desire and failure, ambition and its consequences.

How would you describe this performance in your own words?

My performances are always intuitive in origin. They begin as an amorphous emotional state, something felt rather than understood; and later on acquire form and definition. 

This work unfolds as a tragic narrative: the story of a criminal whose final act of stealing ancient Chinese porcelain ends fatally. She is killed by the police as an unintended consequence of the crime. Then she becomes trapped in a liminal state, suspended between heaven and hell, condemned to endlessly revisit the same question: where did she miscalculate in her crime strategy? She cannot move on until she understands her own failure. Some sort of a psychological purgatory.

What was the initial impulse that led you to create it?

Jessy, the cinematographer, and I passed this building on a bright day in Montreal and discovered that it is a fully functioning office space, yet perpetually empty. Always. It felt like an abandoned corporate kingdom.

Everything about the space is designed for achievement: polished surfaces, perfect symmetry. And yet it is haunted by the absence of life. It felt like a monument to unrealistic ambitions, unfulfilled projections, and imagined success. There is a room filled with countless computers, all switched off, and on the wall a massive clock. I became obsessed with it. To me, it was the purest image of corporate death. I knew immediately that I have to create a performance here. 

What are you reclaiming through this act and from whom?

So, we have a context: corporate perfection that is sterile and terrifying. Within it, a woman attempts to understand her strategic  mistake. Her movements embody a duality of constant searching paired with paralysis. The movement is awkward, uncomfortable, unresolved.

For me, translating inner conflict through physical movement is one of the most powerful forms of expression. I communicate visually rather than verbally. When emotion is shown through the body, it reaches the viewer on a subconscious level.

How does this performance relate to your artistic practice?

In my practice I have to live through multiple versions of myself. Each is authentic. I have to go through a full spectrum of emotions, and the MAIN thing — not to provide answers, but to ask questions.

I am deeply engaged with philosophy and psychoanalysis. The power of these disciplines lies in uncertainty and perpetual questioning. My work explores social structures, modern dynamics, subconscious and psychological patterns. I call it “institute of public opinion studies” hahah. I work in the genre of satire, irony, and self-irony, living through performative states that exist only in the present moment.

Your work is set in places-non-places, where everyone passes by, but no one seems to live in. Do you have a personal relationship with liminal spaces?

Absolutely. This building functions as a metaphorical limbo. It’s a state where the character is trapped until she understands her error. She relives the day of the crime and death, unable to exit this loop.

It shows this one human condition: the tendency to dwell on missed opportunities, irreversible choices, and endless “what ifs.” Life is composed of paths taken and paths forever closed. Becoming one version of yourself automatically eliminates the possibility of becoming another. This work reflects that quiet existential loss:) 

Can you guide us through the symbolism of the briefcase and the vase?

The vase represents the ultimate prize. A treasure so desired that the character sacrifices her life to obtain it. Yet once achieved, it loses its meaning. Desire collapses the moment its object is secured.

The briefcase functions as the vessel, some sort of the tool that enabled the crime. How absurd: she is condemned to eternity alongside the very object she once desired. Desire only exists if you are alive. She is no longer alive. The prize, now, is entirely empty.

You seem to shoot with an analog camera. What is the relationship with the equipment you use?

I love analog because I love imperfection. My first film was shot on 16mm, later I got a Super 8 camera. This piece was shot on MiniDV with an extreme zoom function. The texture is raw exactly the right way.

In an era increasingly dominated by AI and hyper-polished aesthetics, I believe many artists will return to analog processes as an act of resistance. Polished perfection is becoming predictable and boring!

All footage is part of Veronika Yemelyanova’s 2023 performance in Montreal.
Concept / Direction / Performance by Veronika Yemelyanova (@vyemelyanova). Cinematography by Jessy Colucci (@jessycolucci).