Unidentified Figures at SJZ Winterfest
EXHIBITION MANAGEMENT | 2023
Unidentified Figures exhibition by artist Lesia Khomenko. Photo by Quynh-Mai Nguyen
Contemplating the original photos, I see that retouching doesn’t remove strategic information from them; on the contrary, it adds new information that layers up just like characters’ skins in video games. Thus, pixels represent a kind of a ‘superpower’ owned by these ‘superheroes’. In the digitalised world of information warfare, pop culture exists side by side with a real war, and I, being an evacuated civilian, tend to mix up the images. I want my characters to look scary, I want them to make any ‘brainimical’* Russian looking at my works drown in dehumanising agony.”
– Lesia Khomenko
Client: San Jose Jazz
Partners: West Bank, ICA: Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose
Artist: Lesia Khomenko
In 2023, San Jose Jazz Winter Fest presented the West Coast premiere of an exhibition of six larger than life-size paintings by internationally-known artist Lesia Khomenko, who has exhibited her work across the globe, and at the Venice Biennale in 2022. The work was exhibited in the the Unzipped Pavilion in San Jose's SoFA arts district.
