Lilia Bakanova

Contest entry

This work visualizes flow fields and boundary layers—systems used to model how fluids move and interact with surfaces. Rather than simulating flow, my textile process enacts its aftermath, based on the case of the Aral Sea in Central Asia—once the world’s fourth-largest inland lake, now largely vanished due to Soviet irrigation projects. Its disappearance left behind not only physical traces—ripples, sediments, and salt—but also distortions in culture, ecology, and collective memory. Through felting several layers of silk with occasional dense clusters of cotton (both materials were grown with the water that could have fed the Aral Sea), I create dried sea membranes, algae skins, and evaporated shorelines.  These forms reflect how order and subtle patterns emerge within apparent collapse—echoing how mathematical structures surface in noisy or dissipative systems. Veining, diffusion, and rippling are not merely aesthetic; they embody material boundary effects, visualizing the invisible dynamics of loss and transformation. Where fluid dynamics seeks to capture flow in motion, my work holds stillness, giving form to what once moved but no longer can. Instead of modelling the system, I reveal its residue—where movement faded, and patterns dissolved into layered stillness.

Artist biography

Lilia Bakanova is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in sculpture, video, sound, installations and olfactory art. With roots in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, and now based in the UK, she focuses on material traces of ecological and historical transformation. She is interested in how absence, erosion, and memory can take physical form — often through slow, tactile processes that make time, pressure, and disappearance tangible.

Her artworks span a broad sensory range to make complex concepts accessible and felt. As a parent of a disabled son, she prioritizes inclusivity and works to bridge sensory, cognitive, political and cultural divides through art.