Oil pastel, brown paper
Series of large scale oil pastel drawings echoing the Chernobyl disaster’s long shadow stretched through generations to come - the epidemic of leukemia and thyroid cancer along with multiple birth defects has been rising with alarming speed for the natives of surrounding area and beyond. Being from Belarus this tragedy is personal to me, though I do not live there anymore but the rest of my family is. The vivid color of the abstracted bodies celebrates life and brings viewer's attention that the each of them is missing a body part or parts - the birth defects caused by radiation exposure most of the time lead to disfigurement, which is considered a taboo topic of society’s casual conversation. I would like to change that through engaging the viewer into a dialog through the prism of my work and bring more awareness to this matter.