The still life genre is interpreted as an iconic and indexical text, the key to understanding which must be found and observed. Using ancient symbols, referring to the experience of reception and to an intuitive anthropomorphizing optic, I embed certain meanings and dramaturgical constructions in the compositions. Thus, I appeal to the tendency to project my feelings and my experiences onto others, exploring ways of reproducing an anthropocentric logic.

Each painting is a different story, painted as a mise-en-scene and augmented with a traditional symbolic meaning that is firmly tied to the individual subjects of classical still life painting. For example, "Strawberry plates" conceals a problematic image of multiplicity — the correlation of social groups and individuals. "Cherry" presents a combination of traditional symbolic meaning and subject matter expressed by composition, mise-en-scene. It is an image of the turmoil of a wedding day.

In a series of narrative still lifes, I create visual images saturated with ornamental motifs, decorative juiciness. A particular ethnic genome manifests itself in each of them, and through this, the problematic of cultural identity is woven into the story. Here I explore the possibilities of expressing traditional identity within a visual iconic text.

STILL LIFE OR "PORTRAIT"

In this particular series of work I elaborate the distinctive nature of the still life genre, revealing and emphasizing its resemblance to the portrait mode. I convert the visual image into the realm of an anthropomorphizing visual code and empower it with vitality. I create a certain type of picturesque "portraits" of exaggerated size. I make blurred shapes, semi-abstract images that combine the real world with poetic metaphor, feeling, intuitive tension and oscillation. Alongside this series of paintings I extended the binary symbolic meaning of fruit by referring to the experiments of Hieronymus Bosch. In the process of semiosis, fruit can mimic the meanings of life and death. I am, however, interested in expressing a borderline meaning, a zero interpretation. In this transitional state of interpretation of the image, I simultaneously emphasize the significance of the fluidity of time, the slipping away of life and beauty. I emphasize the presence, the cold breath of the reverse side of the symbol but also the approval of life force, of inexhaustible vitality. Each subject of my portrait-like still life is inspired by deep traditions, individual cultural meanings, endowed with the memory of ancient metaphors.