Holy Shit, Svetlana Kenobi Might Be Banksy
By Matt Levy
Co-written with Mindy King-Royal
Svetlana Amadeus Moon Kenobi enters the legendary midtown Manhattan Russian Tea Room wearing a neon green track suit and purple and orange Phoenix Suns veil obscuring her face; it’s a face I never had the privilege to see. She’s four and a half hours late.
The visual artist, chef, event curator takes her seat delicately. The first thing Kenobi does is put her Mastercard down and tell me, “Your money is no good here.” I insist, “It’s on the company card, this is all paid for.” She waves me off wagging her bright pink fingernail in my face. She coos in her trademark Russian accent, “Buy your boss a Roy Rogers, Mr Journalist.” I told her that my boss is diabetic but she was having none of it and I procured a Coke with grenadine for my higher up in a to-go styrofoam cup. I hit “record” on my tape recorder and the conversation began to effortlessly flow.
Over the next several weeks, Kenobi shed light on her notoriously messy private life, much of which was not allowed to be in this final draft due to the 198 Nondisclosure Agreements she’s signed over the course of her storied career. It makes sense; the ageless 53-year-old who reportedly works out 17 hours a day has been romantically linked to every living President (yes, even him) including a steamy affair with Jimmy Carter in mid-2005 which led to her highly publicized split from Kanye West. Also, she might be Banksy.
We’re legally not allowed to confirm or deny.
More on that later. For now, she’s covering the bill at the Tea Room in a performative act of generosity that the grossly wealthy often indulge in.
Editor’s note: this was my last interview before the world went into quarantine and this was a special assignment; no one had spoken to Kenobi publicly before me and I was honored to write about her for this lowly Medium account; she said, “It’s perfect. Not that many people will read it.”
Kenobi did not want me to reveal much about her exquisite Milan penthouse where most of this interview took place (I was flown out there directly after our initial meeting) for security reasons- her multiple stalkers and Kanye’s constant surveillance. The only detail she allowed to be disclosed was, “It’s dope AF, bruh,” leaving more to the imagination than one could dream of.
Svetlana who self identifies as a Jedi and also goes by Sveta for short, Lily & 007 is originally from Montauk, NY and summers in Brentwood, LA. The self proclaimed wizard is still close to her loving “droid” parents who raised her with a three-word philosophy:
Silver Spoon. Mouth.
The Ericksons (she adopted the name Kenobi at 14 to distinguish herself; she changed it legally at 19 while overseas in Cambodia) divorced while she was in high school. Both remarried political leaders of warring third world countries. She quipped, “Let’s just say Thanksgiving is like World War III” and spit out her vodka tonic laughing.
Kenobi’s highschool yearbook quote from her Montauk public school is practically poetry and showcases her virtuosic abilities early on; she said she dreamed it up in her AP biology class while stepping in for the teacher to teach a lesson about mitosis. The quote read, “Just because you are trash does not mean you can’t do great things. It’s called garbage can, not garbage cannot.”
I get chills rereading this.
Kenobi went on to major in Culinary Arts at Scottsdale Community College while simultaneously garnering a minor in Aerospace Engineering at Oxford after her gap year in Cambodia. She tries to stay well rounded and gathers online degrees regularly while summering in the Hamptons to this very day.
Thus far, Kenobi’s proudest achievement was her first solo project weeks after she graduated in 1987 right before she left to seek out her truth overseas; this was her now infamous Ice Cream Social Kick Off to Summer Party. The party was for a select few inner city families brought to Silicon Valley where Kenobi had a short two-week residency. She was set to make something sweet for their kids and this doubled as a fundraiser for Hands Across America two years after it had taken place. Sadly, the social led to a forest fire. Six were injured but the ice cream was deemed spectacular and led to her fruitful and exciting career.
EXPECTO PATRONUM!
Kenobi wanted to include something unexpected in the piece. This was that. Back to her story now.
Svetlana’s culinary visual design is truly unique in that she creates an environment where a dinner for two or a big blowout for thousands shares the same attention to detail and makes their clients’ wildest dreams come true whether it be an all-cheese five course meal or a conceptual where the food is hidden all over a five-story townhouse. In all of her work, you can see that she’s directly influenced by a wide range of artists such as Ke$ha, Andy Warhol and Seth MacFarlane. The race of her creators was an unintentional quirk; she just knows what she loves. Still, Kenobi’s favorite collaborator is her former flame, Yeezy as she still affectionately refers to him. As noted earlier, they have a complicated relationship after their 2008 split. They don’t speak outside of creative projects and “Lily” is allegedly the inspiration for his Grammy winning My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
In the back room of the Tea Room, Kenobi recounts her incredibly precise tastes. She makes sure everything she consumes is thematically linked in a way that suggests clever wordplay. Her favorite television programs range from the seminal underseen Arizona State college sketch program Shark Jumpers to the popular entrepreneurial program Shark Tank to the perfect Flipper. All aquatic.
For film, her three current favorites she’s been rotating through are Cry Baby, Baby Driver and Million Dollar Baby. She wanted it to be noted that she’s not a fan of Boss Baby and tried very hard to like it. For music, her playlist is mostly Nickelback, Hanson and Justin Bieber. She wants to understand what no one else did.
Every night before bed she reads Goodnight Moon. It’s a security blanket for the woman who fears nothing and claims she’s read it cover to cover 17,401 times discovering something new on each read.
Kenobi is a known tastemaker. It’s so ingrained in her persona that she coined the catchphrase, “I like it. Do YOU like it?” It should also be noted that she didn’t want to take credit but she is the originator of the famous plush pillow aphorism, “Live. Laugh. Love.” This is where a $2.8 billion fortune comes from and allowed her to create her Sveta Empire.
Finally, yes. What you’re all here for. Kenobi is MAYBE Banksy but this has not been confirmed. Her publicist declined to comment when asked for more information about this. We will leave it at that and apologize for the clickbait title.
Even though it seems like she has it all, the impresario once lost her way. Creating for the uber wealthy felt false for Sveta; she wanted to reconnect to her modest center before she became Kenobi. As she said, “Nothing makes me happier than watching fire burn. It’s the rebirth into something wholly new that excites me; stability is for the weak.”
Kenobi soon found herself on a yoga retreat in Bali challenging her nimble self. Three weeks of all things spiritual, wellness and veganism. It was time to try something new. Time to connect to the Earth.
She just didn’t know how this new self would manifest. Walking out of the spa barefoot on her way to get her custom-made star fruit infused water, she bumped into renowned creative macaron visionary Kristin Banta Snicker, heiress of the Snicker fortune. She came to Blooming Lotus for the same reason Svetlana did — to drink green tea, watch sunsets and perfect the Pungu Mayurasana. She had come up with “Why wait? Grab a Snickers,” Kenobi said. Now, she was learning the virtues of patience.
Long story short, the two hit it off. Banta Snicker needed help with Rihanna’s upcoming birthday and she knew just the yacht to book it on. The rest is history.
The politically active Kenobi wanted to make sure we mentioned her important viral dog sledding trip in Anchorage, Alaska that was watched 119 million times on Quibi. She added, “It was no big deal but we raised 25 million for Kony 2012 on that trip.” Svetlana tries to stay out of politics but wanted to say, “Fuck C*role B*skin.”
Kenobi’s current relationship status can be summed up best by the cheeky Anna Kournikova quote, “I have a lot of boyfriends, I want you to write that. Every country I visit, I have a different boyfriend. And I kiss them all.” Kenobi has a few sexually transmitted diseases from Jimmy Carter and is proud of all of them.
When Svetlana isn’t changing the course of modern art, her main hobby is Farmville and ordering DoorDash for strangers. She also professionally trains Pokémon for inner city students in her spare time. She added, “My Pikachu is level 100.”
As for now, Sveta is working on a “few surprise birthdays,” which she can’t say much about. A little birdie told me she may be collaborating on an “epic bash” with James Franco and Lizzo though once the pandemic ends. It’s set to celebrate problematic men in Hollywood and recontextualize the dialogue around them.
Still, in five years, Svetlana sees herself holding a Mai Tai somewhere on The Tuamotus Islands. That’s all she wants. That’s all she needs.
She has no social media presence; outside of this interview, she barely exists other than her summer romance with Kanye. There are rumors of a Twitter burner account but no actual evidence. Word is she DMs Elon Musk about fossil fuel energy telling him what to Tweet but no records have surfaced. For now, Kenobi begs, “Please, no paparazzi.” When asked what she should look to wear at the photo shoot, Kenobi insisted again, “Please, no paparazzi or photos.” We’re lucky we’re getting this intimate a portrait of her. Use your imagination but I would describe her as a cross between Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore.
As we close our tab at the Tea Room and the janitor sweetly sweeps away crumbs in a corner, Svetlana tells her favorite story; one as old as time. It’s her story. It’s “This is the story of a girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world. She looked really sad in photographs, too” (which we’ll never see).
Yes, THAT song is about her. All of art is. She is Banksy. She is all of us.
She paid for the Roy Rogers for my boss and we boarded the jet on 57th Street. We were off.
