Katika

Birth. Fragments of the face. 2014 Ekaterinburg-Yaroslavl

First successful attempts at the new technique and the first show.

These pieces are from my "preverbal" phase, which took place during my rebirth as an artist and documents the making of my new artistic vision. This project, titled "Birth. Fragments of the face", was realized right before I decided to dedicate the next five years to learning my art language. I created these pieces for a show in the Tokyo Gallery "101". The main theme is creating incomplete pieces of art, which are still art, even if the artist stops in the middle of creating it. The show's architecture was linked to the idea of walking audience members through stages of creating a portrait by adding features of a face one by one. Right after walking into the first room where my works were displayed a person saw only one eye, after which they saw two eyes, eyes with a nose, etc., until finally, in the second room, full portraits were displayed. Another interesting thing about this project is, the majority of the pieces are images of eyes belonging to the female workers of the Moscow Tax Office. While at the Tax Office, I noticed a particular expression, which seemed unique to me, so I took pictures of the women I was in contact with and used the photos as references while working on the project. I also included images based on my friends and family members, as well as famous people who impacted me during my forming years. "Birth. Fragments of the face", which was shown in Tokyo in the 2014th, when I had just started working in the field of crochet art, or fiber art, became the starting point of my journey and marked my rebirth as an artist.