OVER MY (DEAD) BODY
​Curated by Azad Asifovich

'Over my (dead) body' creates a dialogue between the works of three female artists, all focusing on the subject of the female body. A common use of natural materials – blood on alabaster (Muller), milk on wood (Ev) and egg yolk, tempera and gold on wood (Shachko), deepens the coherence between their oeuvres.

The exhibition presents a unique selection of feminist icons of Oxana Shachko, in which she confronts the female body in a radical manner in opposition to strict religious dogmas. The icons of this young artist, who has, are at the same time testimonies of her own physical and psychological suffering, both as an artists and an activist. As is custom in traditional religious painting, the individuals are accompanied with metaphorical attributes that help the viewer to immediately comprehend the denounced depravations hidden in each work.

A series of anthropomorphic drawings by Sofie Muller represents different aspects of to the human body. Juxtaposed bodies or limps in a vivid blood red are drawn as dreamy almost lifeless entities while containing a strong vitality at the same time, almost as the famous sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci. Muller paints on alabaster with her own blood, an action (painting on stone with blood) that reminds of pagan offering traditions. The fragile vital body transposed on alabaster by the use of carnal colors finds an echo in the icons of Skachko.

Untitled (le silence du dôme) of the French-Russian artist Katya Ev, shows a wooden bedframe filled with milk. The smooth surface of milk, locked in the wooden frame, functions as a mirror to the viewer. This direct confrontation contains several symbolic connotations: the bed as place of intimacy, vulnerability, sickness and death opposed to milk as a reference to mother’s milk, the very first nutrition of all human life. In this context the bed functions as a metaphor for the beginning as well as the end.

Artists: Oxana Shachko, Sofie Muller, Katya Ev