Pig farmers 2016

Babak-Matveev’s 'Pig Farmers' is a digital artwork seemingly made from layered photographs, a process in itself. It has a naive quality to it, like folk art; the composition is busy and abundant with detail and colour. There’s a real flatness to the surface of the image, but then at the same time a real depth. The background is almost theatrical; a kind of staged landscape. Look at the colour palette too, it is almost cartoonish. I am interested in the treatment of the figures in the centre of the frame, and the pig they are holding. There is something about the way the pig is being held that is quite tender. I’m interested in the dialogue between the figures and the pig – an ambiguous relationship between the natural and the human world. Like Rousseau, Babak-Matveev’s work embraces ambiguity. It exists in a space between our world and another.