Untitled 2022

Alevtyna Kakhidze made this line drawing with markers, maybe pens, and ink. I imagine Alevtyna, with her tools close at hand. Did she know what she was going to make? What I like about drawing, and painting, is that they can come into being gradually, shift, emerge through trial, error, and intuition. In this work, she uses a limited palette, of black, white, and yellow. The artist draws this figure who sits on top of a balloon marked ‘Russia’. It is a personification of power, perhaps, with a yellow crown and hands outstretched, holding a gun on one side, and on the other, something that says ‘oil gaz’. Look at the line, the slightly wavering quality of the drawing. The artist speaks to the complexities of power, and wealth, and the anxieties of now. She's in conversation with other artists, and that's what art is, a constant back and forth across time. It's about expression, embracing ambiguity, and allowing for multiple meanings. It is a record of one artist’s embodied and emotional response to the world.