Irene Naraeva is a painter and visual artist based in The Hague. She has been working as an artist since 2002. Painting is at the centre of her practice, alongside digital print, video, collage and assemblage.

Transformation is a recurring principle throughout Naraeva’s work. She is interested in states of transition — the ways in which forms emerge, change, dissolve and reappear, and how one state can carry the traces of another. This idea runs through both her painting and digital projects, where transformation can unfold through sequences of destruction and regeneration, shifting scale and perspective, or unexpected transitions between the organic, the human, the urban and the cosmic.

The relationship between human beings and nature is one of the central expressions of this broader exploration. Moving between abstraction and figuration, Naraeva transforms familiar natural forms through distortion, altered perspective, layering and fragmentation. Trees and organic structures may evoke bodies or figures, while traces of human presence can be sensed within nature. Rather than representing reality literally, she uses the visible world as material for constructing a more subjective reality.

This approach is most fully developed in her ongoing Metamorphoses series, begun in 2022. Trees acquire anthropomorphic qualities, appearing at times as bodies, figures, witnesses or carriers of memory. Boundaries between the human and the natural become fluid, opening up themes of connection and separation, vulnerability and resilience, growth and decay.

Beyond Metamorphoses, Naraeva’s work moves between nature and the urban environment, the organic and the constructed, memory and imagination. Across painting and digital media, she returns to cycles of emergence, disappearance and renewal, as well as to the absurdity of time, the silence between moments, and the subtle intensity of human feeling.

Earlier works and exhibitions may also be found under the names Irina Naraeva and Irene Kovalevskaya.

Based in: The Hague, the Netherlands
Techniques: Painting, digital print, video, collage, assemblage
Collections: Private collections in Russia, Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands

Memberships & Affiliations:
Haagse Kunstkring (The Hague)
Kadmium (Delft)
International Federation of Artists & National Union of Artists of Russia
International Arts Fund, Moscow Association of Artists