12th September – 26th October
PV Thursday 12th September 6pm
Embodying Dissonance: A Journey Beyond the Norm is a solo show of photographic self-portraits by London-based artist Maya Golyshkina.
Maya Golyshkina’s body is both the medium and the message. Golyshkina found her artistic voice amid the solitude of 2020’s lockdowns. During this time, her personal space became an ever-changing stage for her fantastical photographic self-portraits in which she embodies anthropomorphic renditions of various everyday objects.
In her self-portraiture, Golyshkina engages in a playful metamorphosis, imposing a pathetic fallacy by embodying domestic items (a tube of toothpaste, a cheese grater) and characters (a sad clown). In the creation of these images Golyshkina embraces imperfection and raw authenticity: her hand-made costumes and candid digital edits are acts of rebellion against the polished aesthetics and unrealistic ideals that permeate contemporary visual culture and are perpetuated through social media. By revealing the beauty in flaws, Golyshkina invites viewers to confront their own vulnerabilities and reflect on the roles we perform in our daily lives.
In her latest body of work, Golyshkina obscures herself with a crudely painted sheet of cardboard, revealing only small sections of her body through roughly cut holes. In some of these works her overall anatomy – though mostly hidden – seems intact, others are more surreal compositions with her detached body parts multiplied and scrambled. Through this process of reduction, selection and abstraction, Golyshkina reasserts agency over her body: we are only seeing what she wants us to see. Also included in the exhibition is ‘mood of my life’ (2024), a series of video works (originally shared on Instagram) that show Golyshkina crying into the camera, but in front of her eyes she hold objects that emit substances that stand in for tears: Ice cubes melting, juiced lemon halves, or lit candles dripping molten wax. Golyshkina produces an ironic tension by capturing her emotion on camera and overlaying it with her various rudimentary prosthetic tear ducts. Through ongoing repetition, Golyshkina takes any vestige of sincerity and conceals it within a slapstick melodrama.
Golyshkina not only lays bare her own anxieties and uncertainties but also echoes the collective struggles of a generation searching for authenticity amidst a cacophony of curated identities. Golyshkina invites you to join her in embracing imperfection and challenging the superficiality of modern society, fostering a deeper understanding of who we truly are beneath the polished exteriors we often showcase.
This is the third collaboration between Seventeen and Gertrude.
To follow Maya Golyshkina on the Gertrude app click here.
