Refiguring the Facade
By Morgan Schulman
Upon entering the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Pier Show, which opened on May 8th, I was immediately drawn to the display of painted mannequins, petite recreations of the female bust re-imagined by artist Yuliya Lanina. Bodies that once modeled lingerie for simple consumption now sport painted faces, a range of eyes and mouths exhibiting a full range of emotions such as disbelief, satisfaction and love. Lanina, who lives and works in Williamsburg, puts a unique facial expression on each bust, with a nose running along the phalanx, a mouth at the nip of the waistline and a pair of eyes on the breast molds.
It is the eyes that draw the viewer to Lanina’s work. The eyes are as full and round as the breasts themselves, with pupils where nipples would be, prisms upon the apex of femininity. As each piece conveys a distinct face with its own body language and bodily expression, the eyes set each work apart. Deep, lucid eyes convey contented warmth. Red, heavily-lidded eyes suggest malaise. Bold blue eyes with hearts for pupils present love, mirrored by a heart-shaped mouth. Eyes hidden by hands, express the body’s reaction to the unknown. One bust features feathers for hair, a ruffled, matted texture crowning too-crystalline watery blue eyes. Another face has a penis for a nose, lying between the breast slopes, pointing towards the mouth.
The brilliance of Lanina’s work is that the viewer initially forgets that he or she is looking at a bust of the human form and becomes transfixed by the acrylic face and the playful corporeal details. The phallic nose or voluptuous eyes remind the viewer that this is a body, a commercial plastic recreation of the female form meant to sell bras or girdles, and remade by the expressivity of Lanina’s faces. With vibrant images painted on the (plastic) body, Lanina offers a re-vision of body art and representations of the female form. Although these images take up the often serious, earnest task of displaying the body within its socio-cultural context, they are light-hearted and playful, as bodies that play and smirk as well as signify.
Lanina has created these forms out of her own experience as a woman, and on the day of the opening she modeled one of the faces on her own bust. Viewer emotional response to the display was mixed, with some laughter as well as more disturbed reactions; as the multi-layered work takes the body and its presence as a backdrop in and out of context, it is both humorous and pleasurable to look at. It is also discomforting, however, as the plastic bodies display much sensation usually hidden beneath a plastic surface.
Yuliya Lanina’s work will be displayed at the BWAC Pier Show in Red Hook May 8-June 27, and she will have an upcoming show of figure drawings at the
Williamsburg Nexus Gallery August 4-22. Her earlier work may also be seen online at www.yuliyalanina.com.
