Someone wants to devour me...
The collaborative work by Liliya Li-mi-yan and Katerina Sadovski is dedicated to the subject of social taboo. The strict religious education and social status frame person’s sexuality as well as one’s identity.
An objectifying look through the photo lens shows the body that brings delight; it is “divided into the objects of the fetish, erotic areas” (M. Bakhtin). Liliya reproduces the logic of mass culture and advertising which often employes the mechanism of provocation. The strategy of scandal uses constant insinuation against and direct referencing to the obscenity of revealing — obscenity of the imagery, every now and then displaying the object itself — in case to wave goodbye to it and start off the game of accusation and suspicion with another one.
Katerina’s drawings made with oil pastels on top of almost sterile photographs by Liliya, bring the elements of carnivalization (in Bakhtin’s sense), emancipating the image of body from the literariness of its perception, and demonstrate an ironic approach. The manner of drawing is neither hysterical nor precise — rather it shows an infantile negligence of the image composition. Moreover, the medium itself — oil pastels — looks infantile compared to black & white photography. Katerina takes subjects from biblical mythology mixed with stereotypical ideas of beauty and sexuality, as well as patriarchal phobias.
Alexander Plutzer-Sarno in his essay “The philosophical cunt” in which he explores the multiple signifiers linked to the image of vagina, deduces that “we say “cunt” — and mean “death”, “love” or “the Universe”. The intricate processes of re-signifying, the shift of form and meaning are principal for such central signifiers as vagina. In the end, the terminal subject-matter of this type of symbol is Nothingness. The desire for somebody is, eventually, the desire for Nothing. In other words, we long for the process of change, re-signifying, concealment of the desired, or the desire to admit the desire.”
Katerina’s and Liliya’s collaborative work could be interpreted as the representation of body as disguise. Body is understood as a product of social construction. Thus, one’s emancipation from the social constraints could become possible through the emancipation of body by rejecting its prescribed functionality.
An objectifying look through the photo lens shows the body that brings delight; it is “divided into the objects of the fetish, erotic areas” (M. Bakhtin). Liliya reproduces the logic of mass culture and advertising which often employes the mechanism of provocation. The strategy of scandal uses constant insinuation against and direct referencing to the obscenity of revealing — obscenity of the imagery, every now and then displaying the object itself — in case to wave goodbye to it and start off the game of accusation and suspicion with another one.
Katerina’s drawings made with oil pastels on top of almost sterile photographs by Liliya, bring the elements of carnivalization (in Bakhtin’s sense), emancipating the image of body from the literariness of its perception, and demonstrate an ironic approach. The manner of drawing is neither hysterical nor precise — rather it shows an infantile negligence of the image composition. Moreover, the medium itself — oil pastels — looks infantile compared to black & white photography. Katerina takes subjects from biblical mythology mixed with stereotypical ideas of beauty and sexuality, as well as patriarchal phobias.
Alexander Plutzer-Sarno in his essay “The philosophical cunt” in which he explores the multiple signifiers linked to the image of vagina, deduces that “we say “cunt” — and mean “death”, “love” or “the Universe”. The intricate processes of re-signifying, the shift of form and meaning are principal for such central signifiers as vagina. In the end, the terminal subject-matter of this type of symbol is Nothingness. The desire for somebody is, eventually, the desire for Nothing. In other words, we long for the process of change, re-signifying, concealment of the desired, or the desire to admit the desire.”
Katerina’s and Liliya’s collaborative work could be interpreted as the representation of body as disguise. Body is understood as a product of social construction. Thus, one’s emancipation from the social constraints could become possible through the emancipation of body by rejecting its prescribed functionality.
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