Таїнá
Nadya Sobko
Curated by Clemens Poole
Taïná is a solo exhibition of new works by
@sobkonadya , produced during her residency at
@printostan . Activating the analog layering possibilities of the silkscreen technique, Sobko’s project revolves around experimental iterations of a composite image that is part elementary school portrait of the artist and part religious icon. As a child, Sobko participated ceremonially at her church, and this left a lasting impression on her as a contributor to a space where tangible and intangible powers touch humans, resonating with a range of timbres, from solemn to absurd. The smeared separation of these contradictory qualities, shared by art and religion, appears in the visual language of the prints and objects on view in the gallery.
Merged with the elaborate pageantry of the church, its relics and fetishes, the fantasy princess accoutrements of Sobko’s first grade portrait reveal themselves to possess a comparable ritual status. Even the anonymous authors of both appropriated images—a painter of mass-produced sacred icons and a photographer from a suburban studio—become peers. Their personal embellishments are calculated creative signatures, but are also certain to be largely lost on objects destined to be creased in wallets or collecting dust on dashboards. For Sobko, however, these details become parts of the cosmography of her practice. Her appropriation of their images to produce her own iterative, tactile, and even consumable works, probes the originals’ place at the human intersection of sacred and profane.
In addition to artwork as devotional object, Sobko explores another gesture, in conversation with, or as a quotation of, religious mystery. A sacrament is offered, the transmuted body is consumed, and, we can presume, grace is imparted on the initiate. As an art object, or participatory intervention, the edible icon/portrait gives itself without precondition, in the open space of the gallery. However, dogma, twinned in contemporary art and religion, asks us: is there some transformative power that this artistic sacrament might have over us, once it has entered our bodies?
