Face

ink, gouache paper (monotype and drawing), 30 x 40 cm

Artist Statement: I drew this work after Mask. I wanted to make a more compact composition. In my first work, I thought that human hands distract attention, and I drew one head. I don’t know if that head was a real person or a mannequin. I drew what I felt, chaos and fear. Literary passage: Perhaps this head was left from a mannequin, or perhaps it was once a human. Among the fragments and remains, among the cracks and bent iron rods, a face with disheveled hair is the only thing left of the old world. Perhaps he will be reborn again.

Irina Tall Novikova is an artist, graphic artist, and illustrator. She graduated from the State Academy of Slavic Cultures with a degree in art, and also has a bachelor’s degree in design. The first personal exhibition “My soul is like a wild hawk” (2002) was held in the museum of Maxim Bagdanovich. In her works, she raises themes of ecology. In 2005, she devoted a series of works to the Chernobyl disaster, drawing on anti-war topics. The first big series she drew was The Red Book, dedicated to rare and endangered species of animals and birds. She writes fairy tales and poems, and illustrates short stories. She draws various fantastic creatures–unicorns and animals with human faces, and especially likes the image of a man-bird, a siren. In 2020, she took part in Poznań Art Week.

A Song for Irina