Nina's Art Story of Displaced People

My name is Nina Stoupina, I am an artist and live in Ghent, Belgium, but am originally from Russia. I was born in 1955 in the traditional town of Tula and loved to paint even when I was in school. My teachers encouraged me to purse art, although my parents disapproved of it.

In the Soviet era it was presumed that if one wanted to become a painter, one would study at the Art Institute in Moscow an…