Blood Moon 2018

Curator: So, let's discuss Jana Brike's "Blood Moon," an oil painting created in 2018. Editor: The juxtaposition of the girl with the floral crown and the burning bra is definitely striking. It's surreal, almost unsettling. What do you see here? Curator: What's key for me is to consider how Brike is engaging with materials and the labor involved in their transformation. Think about it: oil paint, refined through industrial processes, depicting a garment, industrially manufactured, now undergoing destruction by fire—another transformative process requiring fuel and labor. Editor: That’s a good point! So, it is not just the figure and the bra as symbols, but the painting’s materiality, too. The fire itself consuming the bra… what’s significant about the burning? Curator: Precisely! The burning acts as a form of symbolic labor. What’s being ‘produced’ here isn’t a material object but a statement about consumer culture and the transient nature of meaning. And, it’s not accidental; look closely, it's an extremely deliberate process involving both the destruction of a manufactured commodity *and* the manipulation of oil paints on canvas to carefully simulate the material process of conflagration. What statement is being made, here? Editor: I guess it makes me question my own participation in consumerism, but also in a society with constructed ideas around sexuality and feminine expectations… It’s like the act of burning is freeing, but destructive. Curator: Right, exactly! So the materials themselves, through the artist’s manipulation and intervention, reflect the tensions around consumption, female identity, and social performance. I think about all the hands involved, not only in the artwork's creation, but the undergarment's lifecycle as well, adding additional social dimensions to what could initially read like a strictly autobiographical, personal scene. Editor: I never considered the social aspect, or the sheer physicality of the paint mediating the statement like that! It brings a whole new understanding to the artwork, beyond just symbols and expression. Curator: Yes, examining the materials opens a window into broader societal and economic systems. And I now recognize the importance of thinking more about artmaking as not just self-expression, but almost, like, social engagement and discourse in its own right.