Oct 5, 20213 min read

"3 Questions with Artist Simran Kaur" by Jessica Wang

Brief Bio: Simran Kaur is a surrealist still life, creative portrait, fashion photographer and artist currently based in London. She is Punjabi and she was born and raised in Italy. Simran's main objective is to make the viewer's dreams come true by creating intriguing setups, but she does also creates mental health and environmental awareness with her experimental photography. At the same time, she also creates dreamlike abstract visuals to make the viewer explore another reality. Simran Kaur gets inspired by people's dreams and visions, but her childhood memories also inspire her to create various projects. To keep her childhood memories alive she started doodling digital and traditional illustrations which helps her to understand how she feels about those foggy memories of her childhood.

1. What or who inspired you to start creating art?

I remember that at first I was inspired by Man Ray from which I understood my own perspective of surrealism. I then started getting inspired by Tim Walker for my various creative projects from photography to my illustrations, but later on I also started getting inspired by Elizaveta Porodina and Katja Mayer. As I kept practising my various creative areas, I noticed that I was inspired by people's dreams and nightmares but also by our emotions and feelings especially the ones we don't want to showcase. I also get inspired by my childhood memories and recording them with my projects helps me to remember some of them a bit more vividly. All of my experiences until today made me realise that I didn't want to label myself only as a photographer but also as an artist as I touch and practice various creative areas, therefore I label myself as a surrealist still life, creative portrait and fashion photographer and artist but if someone that doesn't know me and looks at my work for the first time wants to label me as something else I would not mind as I'm always curious to understand and see how other people label me in the creative industry.

2. What are your favourite mediums to work with and why?

This is a difficult question to answer as I don't have a specific favourite medium. I love equally all of the mediums I work with as they inspire each of my projects, for example, if I work on my animation and there is a specific frame I like I might try to recreate it while shooting. Talking about mediums, I started getting into fashion photography not only thanks to my friend but also thanks to my collages and my obsession with magazines as I love looking into magazines to find inspiration or pieces for my collages or to just have fun.

3. Do you have any advice for aspiring artists?

This is really not an advice but is something we forget about and I did write it in my journal:

"Is okay to fail and get lost. Sometimes you can also find a light in failure even if you are not looking for it and following it could lead you to many possibilities which could be failure again, but you could also find a fortune, your golden ticket, the golden route you were trying to search for, literally you could find anything isn't that exciting? It might be scary, but if you don't sail nothing will happen your journey will just end there. Do you want that?"

Simran's Work - Dive a Mind

Medium - Photography