Taisiia Cherkasova comes from a large Ukrainian industrial city - Dnipro. She grew up in a concrete city, represented by a depressing, melancholic and yet reassuring landscape. Concrete is a surprising material, by being rough, imperfect and insipid, it becomes almost uncomplicated. Everything appears beautiful in comparison with concrete. This brutalism creates a sanitized, inorganic and dehumanized environment that exerts a violence on the individual, mutates and transforms him.
Read MoreFascinated by transformation, Cherkasova's work tends to reflect this process. Transformation is a slow phenomenon... which by definition is violent because the birth of a new identity goes through the ultimately vitalizing destruction.
In her work, the artist tries to represent a knot between the reality and atrocity of war and the human body, which is in itself an allegory of the physical state and the psyche or a passage between "seeing" and "living".
Symbolism plays an important role in Cherkasova's creation, especially the image of the animal. In the form of a ferocious beast, the artist describes the wild, authentic and uncivilized side of the human. This part of the individual does not fit easily into the dogmas (normalities) validated by society. It is a "dark" side which is not however dark, but rather intimate and secret. This "animal", often demonized by the Church and society, expresses desire and sensuality. It is an uncomfortable liberator, an inner voice that we silence, a mirror that we avoid looking into.
These reflections take shape in painting on wood cutouts, ceramics or in a voluminous leather piece. The multiplication of mediums allows Cherkasova to make the subject even more present and almost palpable.
Text courtesy Dumonteil Contemporary.
