The Miracle of Christmas, 2023

Dasha Pogodina   Best sellers Emerging artists

This painting will come to you stretched on a wooden stretcher and completely ready to be placed in the interior. ABOUT THE ARTWORK Christmas is one of the main motifs in the history of art. At one point, the canon forbade the painting of Mary lying down or even pregnant because, according to the theologians of those times, it was "too biological, because the Virgin gave birth without pain, remove all these anatomical details". The image of the Virgin Mary is one of the archetypes, an archetype that defines our life and character. In my painting I want to show that the Virgin Mary is beautiful, even giving birth as an ordinary woman, she is beautiful and recognizing a woman's biology, birthing process and weakness does not threaten the image of holiness on which Christian doctrine is built. PERICHORESIS SERIES In her series of works, Dasha uses the term "perichoresis" (Dr.-Greek περιχώρησις - "interpenetration"), a theological term meaning the mutual penetration of divine parts into each other, for the title to describe a unique union that does not imply mixing or merging, but emphasizes an inseparable and inseparable unity. In her work, Daria explores the theme of a new sexuality, deliberately choosing a term from theological treatises for her series of works. With this provocative gesture, she protests against the dictates of religion, the manipulation and pessimization of human sexual expression and corporeality by the church. "Perichoresis" for her is a beautiful and complex term describing the fusion of the divine. Having grown up in the Protestant tradition within Orthodox society, Daria states the separation of sexuality from divinity common in all these religions, while she sees sexuality as the brightest manifestation of divinity, beauty and sublimity. The artist notes that Christian culture has invested the image of the female body with a narrative of pornographic tension, while at the same time presenting paradise before the fall as a sexual paradise, a Garden of earthly pleasures. For the artist, sexual paradise is a safe environment, complete trust, acceptance, an opportunity to open up and discover the Other, an opportunity to learn to be loved and to love. An environment where fusion does not dissolve in the other person, but on the contrary strengthens the individuality of each person and enriches each other. Thus the artist through the term "perichoresis", which means interpenetration, fusion of individualities and even occurs in Christian treatises as a round dance of love, reminds that the division into high and low in love is artificial, and overcoming this division can make life more beautiful. The characters in her paintings are immersed in the enigmatic space of love, and sometimes ironic scenes that balance the degree of sublimity with encounters with anthropomorphic partners.