Galina Manikova likes to say that she is a real citizen of the world. She was born on an earlier Japanese island of Sakhalin, grew up in Moscow, got her art education at Bezalel academy in Jerusalem and lives and works in Norway since 1986.
Crossing the borders, provoking and doubting the established norms were a part of her education and life there and now. Subjects as identity, communication between people from different backgrounds and genders, comparative relations between individual and society, men and women – those were the subjects that were engaging her most at all times.
As a strong and independent female artist she has always been in opposition to the establishment and men-dominated art scene. She has always managed to provoke somebody and met negative reactions to nearly everything she has been doing or saying. Her fight has always been for the right to be different, to be oneself, not like all the others around. No matter where she was in the world, she has always been different against the background of the others. She has never been able to be a part of any group of people based on nationality, culture, social status or even gender.
She still believes it is this special feeling of a unique individual experience that is exactly what each artist needs and should use as a basis and source of inspiration for work and creativity.
Galina has lived in Norway since 1986 and has always been a white Negro and a foreigner in this little, peaceful and provincial country, where most people have a patronising attitude towards her. She has always felt foreign, different and misunderstood there. That was the reason for travelling a lot and looking for a public response other places in the world. She has had projects and exhibitions in Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Spitzbergen and Xiamen city in China.
Being a Norwegian citizen she has the freedom to travel, show her work and say whatever she wants anywhere in the world. She feels very privileged and grateful at the same time as she feels being discriminated, misunderstood and treated unfairly. That has also made an impact on her art.