We will survive as Hybrids: Vernacular Embodiments

By Artist Galina Shevchenko

August 4 – September 17, 2023

Opening reception: Friday, August 4, 2023 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM Free

*Hybrid 7.1* , Digital machine embroidery with polyneon thread on translucent polyester. 16″x22″. 2023

“Through the process of digital stitching, animation, video glitching and augmented reality, I am musing with a multitude of impossibilities: non didactic, grotesque & corporeal; transcending cultural, anatomical & political.

Existing in a precarious state of a cancer-previvor, I am mediating danger, substituting the loss, but yet enjoying the empowerment, becoming a cyborg. My cultural conflation: post-Soviet & Russian and my uncharted Ukrainian rootsare another source of dichotomy, inner conflict and inspiration.

Within my art practice I am working in cross-mediated plurality, subverting media in my exploration of the fabric of human body, overlapping patterned repetition of cultural archetypes, connecting them into sequential knowledge, creating a parallel universe and living one, being a laboratory subject, yet extending the liminal space and offering possibilities for survival and agency.

My current ponderings within my state of split identity inspired me to retreat to the Mannerist allegorical tropes, learning from one of the first feminists in history, Venetian Florentine beauty, alchemist and revolutionary Bianca Capello and her magnificent palazzo covered in grotesque allegorical stanzas.

I am employing animation, embroidery & augmented reality while sequencing my emotional endurances, playing with archetypes, recontextualizing proxy and actual bodies, nurturing and extrapolating, maintaining and holding on.

We will survive as Hybrids: vernacular embodiments features my current multimedia musings: sculptural, projected, performed, embroidered and augmented.”
– Artist Galina Shevchenko

Galina Shevchenko and her sons Daniel & Roman at M Street Gallery, Fresno CA/ on the site of her exhibit (In the Parameters of What it is to Be… curated by Jamie Nakagawa Boley) at California State University, Fresno. February 3, 2023.
Image captured by Chris Lopez, California State University, Gallery Director

About the Artist: Galina Shevchenko is a Moscow-born Chicago based, multimedia artist and mother of 2 boys; formerly a refugee and a legalized alien; currently a naturalized citizen and an educator. Galina’s multimedia practice explores post-feminist & post-soviet identities through mediation, digital materiality and augmented reality. Galina’s work has been featured at Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; CADAF Paris; Aqua Miami International Art Fair; Berlin’s Director’s lounge video festival; Chicago Motion Graphics Festival; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago and numerous Chicago Art Galleries. Galina holds an MFA in studio art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is currently a resident artist at Chicago Art Department and an Associate Professor of Art and Digital Multimedia Design at Harold Washington College.

Learn More: http://www.galinashevchenkosequences.com/

About the Contemporary Arts Program: The International Museum of Surgical Science supports a commitment to contemporary art and artists through exhibitions and programs that use the frame of contemporary artistic practice to examine new perspectives in medical-surgical science and our relationship to the body. The Museum’s Contemporary Arts Initiative includes rotating exhibitions of contemporary art, as well as an ongoing Artist in Residence program.

This project is partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.