Kristina Okan: Selected works, 2022-2023

Kristina Okan: Selected works, 2022-2023

In my artistic practice, I manifest the process of decomposition as the formation of a new aesthetic form by turning withering fruits and vegetables into petrified miniature monuments. My porcelain works usually emerge from the notions of consumption, obsolescence and exploitation. Expressed by fragile decay aesthetics, my works question the idea of beauty itself with its obsessive idolization and ephemerality and, therefore, refer to the plasticity and emotional expression of Louise Bourgeois and Eva Hesse.

In my recent works, I am focused on rethinking the matter of time in the vanitas tradition. The stock thesis on the frailty of life, referable in my works, ascends to the tradition of the Dutch still lifes. I am fascinated by the symbolic system of the signification of XVI and XVII centuries still lifes, based on the Christian connotation of the ripe fruit as an image of the original sin, ephemerality of terrestrial life, and inevitable death. Nonetheless, my works are not about death; they are mostly about the beauty of the moment, representing organic metamorphosis and the imminence of fading as a novel value.

Photos by Marcos Rodriguez Velo

Captions