‘Karas’ Gallery presents the ‘Technogenesis’ project by Oksana Chepelyk. Her canvases offer the viewer with the images of infants. With such an innocent subject the artist if far from being sentimental. Oksana is addressing the controversial theme of technology and birth.

Oksana Chepelyk’s infants resemble alien beings. Strange as it may seem, but it is exactly this comparison that one often hears from the parents of newborns. With such representations the artist probably moves close to the controversial and mystical part of our life – the birth – rather than addressing her own fantasies. Prematurely-born, connected to special machines babies shown in a blue surrealistic light present an image we are not that much used to. Such representations of the babies (not in the nursery and not with rosy cheeks) raise a question: what exactly is a birth of a new human being and what new symbols of that are we given in the contemporary world.

Oksana Chepelyk presents the viewer with her daunting images of premature and catheter-entangled human beings. Under her eye we see two sides of life: the intimacy of the birth process on the one hand, and increasing the country’s gene-pool on the other.

Being an artist with a strong socially-critical position, Oksana combines bioethics, gender, demographic and other social issues in one image.

The name ‘Technogenesis’ refers to two sides of the birth process. ‘Genesis’ – birth as something mystical, a miracle of nature, and ‘techno’ – the ability that humans have to influence it. The truth is, without today’s technology premature infants would probably die. This intermixing of life and death, as seen in the features of the ‘not-yet-ready-for-life’ infants and the depiction of the incubator right next to them is intensified by the alarming tones used by the artist.

The canvases of ‘Technogenesis’ are a bit frightening: it seems that to the artists’ mind the assertion of the complicated process of birth is possible exactly through such an approach.

 

Anna Landikhova