NASARIMBA

NASARIMBA is the playful Calgary based art collaboration formed by artists Rachel Ziriada and Mikhail Miller. NASARIMBA, a word created by the duo means ‘playful mischief’, and focuses on bringing the artists’ playful, colourful vision to life in the forms of various mediums such as painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and murals. The duo’s art has made appearances as murals, exhibitions, and installations (group & solo) at multiple cities across Canada and in Mexico City. 

The creations of NASARIMBA speaks to many different people- children for their bright, playful nature, young adults and teens interested in subversiveness and counter culture, as well as adults interested in how the artists create. Through their murals, the duo are able to work with various organizations and clients across North America, incorporating their ideas into the space in which they work.

Whether existing in the public sphere as a mural, within exhibitions (pictures of the duo’s latest exhibit at VivianeArtGallery, Calgary, Alberta can be found here), or screen printed onto a t-shirt, NASARIMBA’s art retains their playful namesake through bold colours, contrasting shades, and graphic shapes. Their art, whether a mural or a t-shirt, often begins with a collage, with shapes and colours cut out and placed intuitively by the two. These compositions are often inspired by the world around them and how they can incorporate or disrupt these environments with their art. Creating accessible public art that creates colour, texture, and whimsy in environments that go without art- such as their base of Calgary when they moved- is extremely important to Mikhail and Rachel. 

ARTISTIC INFLUENCES 

Their influences range from contemporary artists such as Jessica Stockholder, a sculptor and installation artist, Klub7 Collective, a Berlin/Halle based group focused on murals and performance art, as well as Ron Moppet, a local Calgarian artist whose abstract art is known to combine elements of non-traditional elements. Constructivist artists were part of an artistic movement originated in Russia that used art for social purpose and advancement- artists such as Wasily Kandinsky and Vladimir Tatlin are inspirations to the duo in the context of art history. Past and present artists from Mexico who work as muralists and printmakers, and who use art as activism are also inspirations. The duo are particularly inspired by the work of multi-disciplinary artists Hans Arp and Sophie Tauber-arp, a Modernist design duo collaboration from over a hundred years ago whose paintings, textiles, and wood-relief sculptures inspire the relief sculptures of NASARIMBA. 

MIKHAIL AND RACHEL’S FIRST MEETING

While the two artists are both from Calgary, they originally met in Victoria, BC when Rachel was studying for her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Victoria and Mikhail was working as a curator for the Ministry of Casual Living artist run-project space programming. Before Rachel graduated, she took Mikhail to one of her final installations, and he found that the two of them shared “sensibilities in terms of colour, the use of found objects, and the ability to transform spaces.” The two quickly got to talking about their artistic inspirations and visions. 

On Rachel’s part, she found out that the time she’d met Mikhail in Victoria was not the first time she’d encountered his art. When she’d lived in Calgary, she had recognized his graffiti in the stairwell of the Alberta University of Arts building, and knew of the Tender Mountain Clan collective which Mikhail belonged to. While on a city-hopping trip to see art, at their stop in Montreal, Rachel heard back from a Victoria-based art collective, the Fifty-Five Arts Collective, who had accepted her submission to create an installation in the space. With permission from the collective, Mikhail and Rachel joined forces for their first artistic collaboration- sparking a more than five-year-long artistic collaboration. 

THEIR EARLY LIVES + INTRODUCTION TO THE ARTS

Mikhail grew up in an environment where not only was his artistic endeavours supported, but where he had many varying artistic inspirations and influences. Having grown up near the Andy Warhol museum in Pennsylvania, he developed an interest in screen printing, whereas skateboarding culture heavily influenced the way he understood art, culture, and fashion. After a summer course of studying photography at 15, he moved back to Calgary, finished up high school and completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Alberta University of Arts. Following a year-long printmaking internship at the Banff Centre of Arts, he moved to Victoria for six years where he would eventually meet Rachel and work together to form NASARIMBA. 

Like Mikhail, Rachel also formed an interest in art at a young age, and while she tried everything she could, she focused mostly on drawing in her high school years. When her parents would take her on trips throughout North America, she would have the opportunity to visit many different museums and learn about various mediums of art and art collections. At the University of Victoria, she volunteered at the local campus radio station while working to create immersive art installations. With the immersive installations, she learned to work on and incorporate many different mediums into these pieces; while at the campus radio she used being on-air as a creative outlet and met many musicians who, at the time, were the only people she knew who lived with their art as both passion and work. While she acknowledges that seeing this as a young person could have romanticized it, she “saw it as an encouragement to explore that as a possibility for [herself] - with [her] passion for visual art”.

Mikhail and Rachel’s art pieces for an exhibition in France.

‘PROCESSING ROCK BAY’- THE DUO’S FIRST COLLABORATION

The duo’s first collaborative installation together was called “Processing Rock Bay”. Rock Bay, the area in which the gallery they exhibited at was located in, is an area in Victoria which was once the site of rapid industrialization in the city, leaving behind a legacy of pollution, degradation, and economic instability. The installation was a commentary on this as well as the socio-economic situation on the edges of downtown Victoria. The pair spent two weeks creating audio/visual clips and collecting discarded objects to create an immersive installation that filled up the two-room gallery. The achievement of this installation led the two to continue working with each other to this day. 

When the two moved back to Calgary together, the city landscape was not especially welcoming to mural artists. Calgary’s hefty fines that punished building owners who did not cover up graffiti on their walls was a particularly large aspect of this. To Rachel and Mikhail, who just had travelled through cities across North America filled with accessible public art, Calgary was full of unwelcoming grey concrete when they knew it was deserving of more. Their first project in the city critiqued this hostility to public art by placing wooden sculptures, made of recycled wood, on telephone poles to disrupt the concrete environment. 

DIFFERENT MEDIUMS & TIES WITH THE FASHION SCENE

In addition to their work in murals and paintings, the two have also been experimenting with different mediums, in particular the usage of silk-screen and printmaking to create wearable art. Shirts, tote bags, crewnecks and hats have been an important cornerstone of their collaboration, both as a form of wearable marketing, of getting NASARIMBA’s name out there, but also of making sure that their art is accessible. “Whether it’s wearable garments, street art interventions, or murals, part of our mission as artists is to create work that is accessible to everyone, and that integrates into everyday life”. The two design, experiment with, print, and dye their garments by themselves, allowing them to create these pieces of wearable art exactly how they conceived them.

In working closer with the fashion scene in Alberta with this different medium, the duo have managed to make connections with those looking to keep art alive via fashion. Hideout Distro + General Store, an Edmonton store that features goods and products from independent brands, designers, musicians and artists across Canada, carries garments, prints, and other items from NASARIMBA. The store’s mission, which is to both bridge the gap between artists and the customer, as well as to ‘respect and support the truest of expression’ are goals that align quite well with NASaRIMBA’s fundamental purpose. 

Another store with close ties to NASARIMBA is Velour Clothing Exchange, a consignment store located in Calgary, which has supported the duo by carrying their garments for years. Velour Clothing Exchange, owned by Mikhail’s mother and sister, has a long history of supporting artists and independent designers. You can find another one of the duo’s striking murals, titled ‘Primary Odyssey’ on the side of the brand’s old location on 17th street in Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood (see the last photo of this article), as well as a different mural that was painted on the inside of their new location on 4th street. The ‘Primary Odyssey’ mural was part of BUMP, or the Beltline Urban Mural Project, an initiative launched by Beltline Neighborhoods Association to freshen up the neighbourhood with a gorgeous display of public art. 

NASARIMBA also recently participated in the Secret Shop market, a local Calgary underground fashion market. “There are some markets that help [us] in solidifying why we’re still making clothing. Secret Shop is one of them.” The passion for art, fashion, inclusion, and the celebration of self-expression through fashion are all reasons NASARIMBA loves to work with markets such as Secret Shop, Hideout Distro + General Store, and Velour Clothing Exchange. 

THE CALGARY ART SCENE

The Calgary arts community, the two find, is small with a lot of potential and room for growth. While there are many artists and a passion for art among them, there’s also a lack of local investment in Calgarian talent, as well as a lack of affordable rent for artist spaces and music venues. In order for there to be a thriving arts culture and community, accessible alternative creative spaces are a must. Mikhail urges Calgarians to buy local, to change the culture around this. 

Working in both the creative industries while at the same time keeping up a small business can be a tough challenge to balance, Rachel and Mikhail find. “There’s a myth that as artists, we are always doing what we love to do, and that it’s not hard work, or work at all. That’s not the case. Artists are very hard workers and deserve to be compensated for their skills. Exposure doesn’t pay the bills.” Boundary setting is incredibly important to the two of them. When not working on their projects, the pair often are still thinking of what’s left and what’s next to do. As artists, they’re their own advocates whether it comes to negotiations on contracts and commissions or when to stop/start work. 

On the other hand as artists, the joys of their work include meeting new people, traveling, working on a variety of different projects, and being able to create change and affect communities via public art. For them, their success comes from the hard work they’ve put in, and their belief that after years of working on one’s craft, good things will happen to artists who don’t give up.

“As an artist, you get back what you put in. Art is a lifelong journey.”