Margarita Gluzberg was born in Moscow, USSR (now Russia) in 1968. In 1979, at the age of 11, she immigrated to London, England. She received her higher education in England where she has continued to work as an artist and lecturer, initially specialising in photography. Her oeuvre now encompasses drawing, painting, performance, photography, and sound installations, revealing a complex interplay between past and present, memory and fiction, influenced by the material and surface realities of western consumer culture.
Artist Margarita Gluzberg was born in Moscow, USSR (now Russia) in 1968. In 1979, at the age of 11, she immigrated to London, England. The British capital - with its vibrant billboards and bustling shops - offered a completely different environment to the austere, advertisement-free, concrete surroundings of the USSR that she left behind. However, it is the experience of this difference that also led her to explore the power of capitalism and western consumer culture through her work. In England Gluzberg pursued her further art education at the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford and the Royal College of Art in London. During her academic years, she also worked as a designer for theatre productions and created illustrations for a pair of children’s books.
Integrating historical, semi-autobiographical, and cultural elements with her work, Gluzberg generates spaces that evoke bygone memories while navigating the many facets of modern life, accentuating the continuous dialogue between reminiscence and contemporary existence. For example, in her 2012 exhibition Avenue des Gobelins in London’s Paradise Row, Gluzberg unveiled a series of analogue black and white photographs titled The Consumystic where the intentional charm of retail window displays is turned into a realm driven by illogical desires, reminiscent of Surrealism. In 2016 her Wellcome Trust project Rock On Bones, a series of multi-media Performance Lectures, was presented at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill; Performance Studio, London; and the Royal College of Art. In 2019, the In Paradiseexhibition at London's Pushkin House celebrated the 40th anniversary of both Tarkovsky’s iconic sci-fi film Stalker and Gluzberg’s emigration from Russia. The show included large drawings, born from the projection of Stalker scenes onto paper during nocturnal sessions, capturing the film’s essence and the artist's emotional reactions. These illustrations, hanging from custom metal rods, immersed visitors into a visual narrative interweaving Gluzberg’s migration story and themes from the iconic film. Each piece invited the audience to reflect, thus fostering an interactive and site-specific experience. Her 2022 Proper Time exhibition at Karsten Schubert London featured large-scale drawings of spheres, crafted with pastel and coloured pencils over several months. The creative process, akin to time-travel, intertwined past and present through the use of vintage drawing materials. The spheres, both dense and voluminous, symbolised moments of intensity, offering a study of space, reality, and the intricate act of drawing.
Gluzberg has often exhibited in London, especially with Paradise Row and, occasionally, abroad. She is represented by Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art in New York. She has been honoured with several awards, such as, in 2003, the Wingate Scholarship in Fine Art at the British School in Rome and the Arts Council England Award in 2004. She also completed a residency at the British School in Rome in 2004. In 2016 she received the Wellcome Trust Arts Award.
In addition to her artistic practice, Gluzberg has built a substantial career in teaching. In London she has taught at Camberwell College of Arts, Chelsea School of Art, Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, and the Slade School of Fine Art. In addition to her London posts, she has also worked at Sheffield Hallam University. Gluzberg has also taught abroad at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and the Valand Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2018, she assumed the post of Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy Schools in London, a position she holds to date. Margarita Gluzberg currently lives and works in London. In the UK public domain, her work is represented in the collection of the Hackney Museum in London.