From February 21 through February 26, 2026, MORA Art Museum presented Equilibrium at 80 Grand Street in Jersey City. The multi-part exhibition brought together photography, sculpture, jewelry, and contemporary painting, combining Michael Ezra’s solo presentation with a group show featuring Yelena Kimelblat, Sara Pisheh, Alexander Dudorov, and Alina Shimova.
Alina Shimova, a Miami-based contemporary figurative painter, presented works from her New Totems series, a body of work that marked a notable shift in her practice toward a darker, more resolved symbolic language. Her paintings combine classical training, spiritual reference, and anthropomorphic imagery, often using animals and sacred figures as reflections of contemporary identity.
That development became especially visible in the works shown at MORA Art Museum. Bear With the Cigar, and I Got the Power introduced highly stylized figures charged with attitude, projection, and social performance, while Classic Ganesha brought a more still, icon-like presence into the installation. Together, the three paintings showed how Shimova uses symbolism not as decoration, but as a way of thinking through power, vulnerability, ritual, and self-construction.
What distinguishes the series is its internal coherence. Earlier phases of Shimova’s work moved through a brighter, more pop-oriented palette, while New Totems developed a more controlled visual language built around dark grounds, gold accents, theatrical surface, and psychological charge. In these paintings, animals do not function as simple metaphors. They operate more like contemporary totems – figures that gather projection, identity, aspiration, and unease into a single image.
Shimova’s background helps explain that structure. She trained under Russian painter Mikhail Satarov, studied Fine Art Restoration, and developed an early interest in psychology. She has also lived in Casablanca, Cairo, Nice, and London, and has traveled across more than 50 countries, contributing to a broad symbolic vocabulary. In her work, those references do not become illustrations. They become atmosphere, tension, and compositional control.
The presentation at MORA Art Museum marked an important step for Shimova – her first time exhibiting within a museum context. More than mere visibility, the exhibition placed New Totems within a formal contemporary art setting and clarified the series’s strength as a cohesive body of work. As part of Equilibrium, Shimova’s paintings entered into dialogue with the wider exhibition structure shaped by Michael Ezra, Yelena Kimelblat, Sara Pisheh, and Alexander Dudorov, while retaining their own distinctive symbolic language.
Alina Shimova
Shimova (Alina Shimova; born in Russia in 1985) is a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Miami, USA.
Traversing the interconnected realms of identity, spirituality, human society, and the animal kingdom with a distinct contemporary touch, Shimova asks her viewers to rethink the networks of connection we inhabit. Whether it be striking hyperrealistic portrayals of feminine archetypes or anthropomorphized animals, Shimova’s work positions her subjects as cultural totems that bridge worlds, inviting a deep exploration of consciousness through the natural world’s wisdom.
Shimova’s journey as an artist began under the formal training of the esteemed Russian painter Mikhail Satarov, which enriched her classical foundation and enabled her to master the techniques of landscape, still life, and portraiture. This disciplined foundation, complemented by an early education in psychology, set the stage for Shimova’s eventual turn toward symbolism and human-animal archetypes. Immersing herself in countless contemporary art museums during her early travels to the United States, she redefined her artistic path, steering her away from classical representation toward a bold, modern style infused with narrative depth.
Her global experiences—living in Casablanca, Cairo, Nice, and London—expanded her artistic vision, shaping her as a cultural nomad. Shimova has traveled through over fifty countries, each location enriching her perspective. North Africa’s geometric art, Islamic motifs, the elegance of French design, London’s dynamic art scene, and her exposure to sacred sites and indigenous traditions, including Machu Picchu, fostered her fascination with symbolism and the metaphysical, which she integrated into her compositions. These journeys built her expansive visual lexicon, leading to the recent emergence of her bold, dark elegance style of ‘humanized animals’—spiritual totems imbued with the inherent wisdom from Hindu, Egyptian, and other traditions. Shimova emphasizes interconnectivity and unity of life across boundaries, beliefs, and species through these cross-cultural inspirations.
Visit: www.shimovaart.com | Instagram: @shimova.art
Email: shimovaart@gmail.com | Mob.: +1 305 767 5223
