Touch Starved

2021
prints

The text from author’s personal notes app, highlighted on a series of photographs, can be seen as a subjective, internal introspection in moments of insecurity and apparent inadequacy, and can also serve as a substitute for thebroader issue of women's experience and its connotations. Anastasija's alter-ego persona, this time, is a literal visualization of unrealistic expectations regarding the maintenance, perfection and transformation of body and attitude in accordance with social demands, sexual fantasies and consumerist culture. Otherwise desirable elements, widely associated with female attractiveness and sexuality, in their totality and hypertrophy highlight the banality of placing any of them on a universal level. This fictitious avatar of a double standard, upon deeper reflection, becomes more and more real. Although it does not occupy real space, it is an all too common inhabitant of the mental space of most women. The only thing that varies is the degree and frequency. Opting for a radical depiction of a character whose aestheticization is stretched to the very border of parody, the artist confronts us with the interesting topic of searching for the limit of one's own hypocrisy.- Ognjen Minić, art historian