Inside the Studio: Bissera Antikarov (Pearl Fine Art)
- Art Dealer Street
- Feb 24
- 5 min read
Cities speak constantly, but most of us move through them without listening. Pipes, scaffolding, water towers, fire escapes—these elements fade into the background, absorbed into daily routine. For Bissera, they are anything but invisible.
Trained as an architect and urban designer, Antikarov approaches the city with a practiced eye—one attuned to proportion, rhythm, color, and structure. Her City Clippings series isolates fragments of urban infrastructure and reassembles them through hand-cut collage, transforming overlooked details into compositions that feel both architectural and poetic.
Rooted in New York yet open to cities across the world, her work invites viewers to slow down and reconsider the built environment that shapes everyday life. In this Inside the Studio conversation, Antikarov reflects on seeing beauty in the mundane, working by hand in a digital age, and training the eye to notice what is usually passed by.
Read on to learn more in an exclusive interview with Bissera Antikarov :
You describe yourself as an architect, urbanist, designer, and artist. How does your architectural training shape the way you see the city differently from most people, and how does that perspective influence your art-making?
I grew up and have always lived in big cities, so I am “urban” by nature. I have a genuine interest in the built environment and a love for cities—maybe that’s why I chose to study architecture. I always look up and around when I walk in any city or town and am well aware of my man-made surroundings.
My architecture and design training and practice have taught me to look at and evaluate details, proportions, shapes, and colors of buildings and structures, so I see or discover elements that most people with an untrained eye don’t even notice. My desire and excitement to show others what I see is what my art is all about.
Your City Clippings series transforms everyday urban details — pipes, bridges, brick walls, water towers — into striking compositions. What first drew you to these “invisible” or overlooked elements rather than iconic landmarks?
I see beauty in the mundane. I see artistic shapes, volumes, colors, and relationships even in plain or “ugly” urban structures. I see the ART in architecture and infrastructure and am eager to showcase it for others—to see the unseen, to appreciate it, and to enjoy it.
Your process is beautifully hands-on: snap, print, cut, glue, and paste. In a world dominated by digital tools, what does working physically with paper and collage allow you to express that digital methods cannot?
I love working and creating with my hands. I like texture and that tactile feeling on my fingertips, and I very much value and appreciate craftsmanship. I think handmade collage creates depth and layers that digital tools may not be able to express.
As someone deeply connected to New York, your works feel both documentary and emotional. When you walk through the city photographing, are you searching for something specific, or is it more intuitive — a moment of recognition when a shape or structure calls to you?
When I first started taking these photos years ago, they were moments of accidental discovery that I simply wanted to capture. After collecting hundreds of such images, I felt called to make something lasting and memorable from them, and that’s when I began making the collages.
Now I am more deliberate in my observation of the city. It can be both an unexpected glimpse of something and a random visual search—without looking for anything specific, just looking up and around during my daily city walks. New York is an endless feast for the eye in this respect. There is always so much to see if one makes an effort to look and has a purposeful eye. With my art, I aim to train the eye of others to see what I see.
Your compositions often feel architectural themselves — layered, rhythmic, almost like building a city within the frame. Do you approach each collage the way you might design a space or structure?
I guess so—my process is both intuitive and deliberate. I spend hours moving around the cut pieces until the composition “clicks” and I am satisfied with the resulting image. The shapes and colors have to be balanced, not sitting “heavy” in certain areas or feeling disjointed and disorganized.
There is structure, rhyme, and rhythm in my artworks. There is a “method to my madness,” as the saying goes.
You call your work “infrastructure as art.” Can you talk about the idea of beauty in function — and why you think elements like water towers, steel beams, and aging brick carry such strong visual poetry for you?
All objects and structures have volumes, shapes, textures, and colors—like sculptures. The way they interrelate with one another in a dense urban environment can be very dynamic, almost like an interweaving dance.
I see and uncover these visual and aesthetic aspects of physical, functional elements. They speak to me and call to be revealed. Perhaps my architecture and design background has shaped my eye and vision to strongly relate even to mundane objects and structures—and to feel excited about showing the beauty and art within them.
You’ve exhibited with Clio Art Fair and will be returning again this May. How has showing your work in that environment — surrounded by independent, self-represented artists — influenced the way audiences engage with your city-centered practice?
I love being surrounded by artistic energy and excitement at Clio Art Fair. I also really enjoy meeting and interacting directly with the fair’s audiences in person and conveying my genuine excitement about New York City—its architecture and infrastructure, which are the main characters of my art.
You mentioned that City Clippings will expand to other U.S. and European cities. How do you imagine your visual language evolving as you document new places — and what excites you most about interpreting different urban identities through collage?
My artworks are becoming more complex and layered, much like the actual cities they portray and will continue to portray. I have taken many photos in other cities as well and am beginning to create new collages from them.
For each city, I aim to showcase its unique architectural and structural elements and character. Stay tuned!
At the heart of Bissera Antikarov’s work is an act of attention. Her collages don’t monumentalize cities—they reveal them, piece by piece, through fragments we are conditioned to ignore. Pipes become lines, bridges become rhythms, infrastructure becomes quiet choreography.
What makes City Clippings resonate is not just its visual clarity, but its generosity. The work asks nothing dramatic of the viewer—only presence. To look up. To look again. To recognize that beauty does not belong exclusively to landmarks or skylines, but lives in the systems that hold cities together.
As her practice expands to new cities and grows increasingly layered, Antikarov continues to translate the language of architecture into something tactile, intimate, and human. Her work reminds us that cities are not just places we move through—but places that shape how we see, think, and feel.
You can learn more about Bissera Antikarov and her work via these links:
Website: Bissera Antikarov - Pearl Fine Art Instagram: @pearlfineart Facebook: @Pearl Fine Art
Comments