Guilt
TO PLEASE, TO SERVE , TO OBEY
Pen and ink on paper
100 x 70 cm
On Request
Body and embodiment are the central motives of Marina’s artistic practice, which spans from dealing with her personal experiences to the consideration of complex social questions posed in relation to the woman’s body. She (re)questions and (re)works physical and sociocultural pressure trough various media (performance, video, installation…). Series of drawings To Please, Serve and Obey 2020 explores the power distribution, body economy, and sexuality in its most complex societal form. Although it is primarily perceived as a theme, BDSM rests only as a scenery, a setting for deep insights into power relations over the concepts of sex, self, sameness vs. otherness, falus and fetish, guilt and shame, discipline and punishment, desire and fulfillment, and into their dynamic interdependence. Working with corporeal restrictions enables her to associate the values such as satisfaction, pleasure, feminine jouissance with the violence, control and different forms of submission and dominance. In her work, bodies are not subjects. By isolating her figures against white backgrounds, Marina deliberately de-contextualizes them, pushing them uncomfortably, daringly, and seductively into the viewer’s space. In the strange world of Otherness, our eye is captured with the seductiveness of the empty signifier, inviting position of the absent master to rule over, to conquer, this overdiciplined but nonetheless defiant chaos of carnal pleasures. X Vitamin Contact: xvitamingallery@gmail.com