I often find myself contemplating the forces of nature that shape us and the metaphors they offer for our internal emotional landscapes. The turbulent oceans of our minds are equally fraught with danger, yet those same forces also grant us an immense capacity for joy, wonder, desire, and vitality. The figures exist amidst chaos: unforgiving seas, violent lightning, and monsters of the deep. The question is whether they are suffering or thriving. What joy might be found in dancing within a storm? They are naked, erotic, and vulnerable, yet there is also agency in their movement, a sense of surrender that is simultaneously an act of defiance.
Anastasiya Tarasenko
The knife series presents intimate vignettes of rocky oceans, daring escapes from towering heights, and figures howling at lightning as a wolf howls at the moon. Each work is imbued with longing, a longing not merely to survive, but to thrive. In Untitled, a small teardrop-shaped cutout in the cleaver reveals a hidden painting within. Amid a dark and stormy night, a sunlit day emerges. The antique cleavers themselves, collected over the past year, carry rich histories of their own. Rusted and weathered, experiencing their own evolution through violence and the forces of time, they prompt questions about who wielded them and for what purpose. Now, retired from their original function, they serve as vessels for art. Their utility has been transformed and fixed forever within objects that invite contemplation rather than use.
Ultimately, Eternal Conduit explores the chaotic and unstable momentum of life and the forces that propel us through it. Vulnerable yet determined, fragile yet yearning, Tarasenko’s figures embody a fundamental human condition: the desire to move forward despite uncertainty, in search of meaning, joy, and transformation amid the storm.
