A modern take on a subject once popular among the Old Masters, this work blends religious dogma with a story encountered in social media.

A Russian woman who’s boyfriend died in the war with Ukraine, is considering getting pregnant with frozen sperm of the deceased in order to receive material compensation. Her new partner is very supportive of the idea.

Started as an emotional response to this story and inspired by El Greco’s etherial Oballe Immaculate Conception, this work turns heavenly scene into a nightmare with soldier instead of white dove, scruffy looking children instead of chubby cherubim, pragmatic and calculating Mary (or is it really Margarita?) surrounded, instead of angels, by figures representing state’s control over mind and bodies.  

The audience is drawn into a distorted world where multiple perspectives blur the boundaries between interior and exterior, far and near, old and new, real and imagined.

This seemingly macabre narrative however, is reminiscent of a very real world where war turns criminals into heroes, extreme poverty lays the grounds for extreme propaganda, and humans are reduced to their bodies that exist, first and foremost, for the benefit of the state.