Untitled 2022

Curator: Looking at this piece by Alevtyna Kakhidze, simply titled "Untitled" from 2022, I am immediately drawn into the intimacy of the artist’s hand. It’s rendered as a sketch on what looks like simple notebook paper, and my immediate impression is one of vulnerable transparency, a window into the artist's process. Editor: Transparent, definitely. The medium is direct: ink or marker on paper, unassuming and immediate, yes, but for me, what screams to the forefront is its grounding in labor. It is “from курс культурна біологія,” after all, indicating an assignment and, hence, a direct relationship to the social means of academic production. I cannot help but wonder about the circumstances of its making: class constraints, the accessibility of materials, what it signals of education and production in this time and context? Curator: Yes, it literally reads as though it stems from coursework! A thought scribbled during a lecture, transformed perhaps through art, revealing her playful understanding of biology via a self-portrait… or is it a couple portrait? I keep thinking of cells mirroring cells here and it makes my own body feel a bit surreal, alive in my skin in an overwhelming way! The mirroring nudes with text blocks are so suggestive of how we differentiate in an organic sense, literally our DNA versus how we think, learn, process, our awareness. I love the line that says something about how 'my cell is different from yours.’ Editor: And, critically, how it uses the female and male form as illustration and text to denote a complex but materially basic concept of organization! What begins at "molecules" in neatly stacked lettering proceeds down the bodies of her subjects, anatomizing what is clearly "biological organization” as written in Ukrainian and further broken down into "tissues", "organs", and ending at "organism." If this work began, then, as a lesson for cultural biology it seems it may further interrogate biology *as* culture, using image and word, the raw materials, as building blocks. What is more, the labor required in the course-- attending, writing, doodling-- is all present, too, in these visible lines. Curator: I agree. Its honesty in production and its simple composition make this drawing feel raw but tender. Its intimacy is powerful and reminds me of those moments we find the most self-aware. Editor: I am interested in that tension: that what seems to offer an unmediated sense of 'self' emerges precisely out of prescribed labor, like notes after all. It urges us, perhaps, to reflect more intently on the labor we take to be “our own.”