Painting "The Queen of Sheba. Self-portrait"
9000 €
For the sake of the exhibition at Moscow, Zhenya went to Valaam, where she studied the basics of icon painting. Turning to sacred iconography required meditative concentration. The result of the trip was the idea of an apophatic icon for the exhibition "Spiritual Warfare", and three years later a new technique was born - "scorching". Like Theophanes the Greek and his hesychastic artistic practice, Zhenya creates a volume from the surface of wood scorched to coal. Just as the sun-scorched soil of the monastic desert became the central motif of the Trinity Chapel of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery on Ilyina Street in Novgorod, so Zhenya's boards became sacred matter, ideally suited to the chosen theme - rethinking biblical iconography in a current context. The Trinity appeared as an obvious reference to Pussy Riot, the Antichrist - the parsuna of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill. In this sense, apophatic theology, as a practice of achieving truth through denial, became the ideal formula for the invention of a scorched technique.
In the project "Song of Songs" Zhenya moves away from the current political topic towards deeper reflections on the topic of relations between a man and a woman. It is important to note that Zhenya refused the tyranny of curatorial thinking for the sake of creative freedom of expression. The exhibition unites several artistic cycles. The main cycle is devoted to understanding the female image: Sulamith-Shulamitha, the archetype of the beloved, the victim image of a young inexperienced creature, a young creature; Black Madonna, interpreted as a kind of apophatic creature, to a greater extent, like Mary Magdalene before meeting Christ; Queen of Sheba - a mature woman, powerful and magnificent. The artist's intention to give keys to the riddle of the ambivalent female image hides a lot of cunning. A selfie of Zhenya Maltseva looking down on her, and it contains the answer: C'mon, babe! Good try! The apotheosis of the female theme is a lingam assembled from cast iron pots, a forgotten dishware used only in the patriarchal village reality, where the center of the female universe was a huge stove: a source of warmth, comfort and hot food.
materials: wood, singeing, oil, acrylic, stain.
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