Gallery Portal 11 presents “Posthuman” personal exhibition by Olena Khomiakova. 03.08.2024-25.08.2024.
Posthuman is a concept related to the field of science fiction, futurology, modern art and philosophy at the same time. It means a person or being that exists in a state beyond the human. This is a hypothetical image of a future person who, in order to achieve certain goals, abandons the usual human appearance due to the introduction of technologies: informatics, biotechnology, medicine.
It all started with Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche. In the second half of the 19th century, thanks to them, the concept of evolution came to science and there was an understanding that man is not the pinnacle of the development of living beings, but an intermediate link. Nietzsche’s concept of the superman gained popularity: “Man is a rope stretched between an animal and a superman.” Human evolution is not complete.
The exhibition combines my works from three series: Posthuman (2019-2024), Infomania (2018), Biodinamika (2017-2024). They have a common leitmotif about human development and prospects for its evolution in the future.
My works are dedicated to the life of a person in the information space, how it shapes our reality, how it changes us every minute of being in it. Virtual spaces and replacing reality with digital landscapes are already a part of our lives. And the future offers us digital immortality and the limitless possibilities that we will get thanks to advanced technologies. Perhaps, in the future, our reality will lose a clear division into digital and physical, real and virtual.
I am also interested in the interaction of a person with the surrounding world, life in a single ecosystem, in which a person is only a part, a subject that interacts and develops in the environment of other natural subjects. I depict a person in the depth of a complex system of connections that unites all living things on Earth. For me, the posthumanist statement about the relationship of man with other natural agents is very close to me, where humanity is only one of many natural species that rejects our dominance over nature.
Already now scientific medical experiments on genome editing are changing a person’s life and giving him new qualities. Perhaps with the help of technology, our descendants will become cyborgs with mechanical implants, regenerative limbs and cameras built into their eyes, as depicted in science fiction? Will a person turn into a hybrid of a biological being and a robot? Will our height, build, facial features and skin color change? Will our goals, way of existence, self-enlightenment as a person change?
Olena Khomiakova was born in 1980, Kyiv, Ukraine.
In 2000, she graduated from the Kyiv Institute of Decorative and Applied Art and Design (now the M. Boychuk Academy of Decorative and Applied Art and Design). In 2004, she graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv. She studied at the painting and temple culture workshop of Prof. Storozhenko M. A. Master of painting, researcher, teacher. Since 2001, she has been participating in all-Ukrainian, regional and international exhibitions and projects of contemporary art. Olena has been a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2006.
She works in traditional mediums of painting, graphics art and with digital collage. Her artworks are in private collections and galleries in Ukraine, Poland, Germany.
Olena lives and works in Kyiv city, Ukraine.
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