Annunciation: I am with you, dear, 2025

Dasha Pogodina   Best sellers Emerging artists

This work captures the metaphysical moment of support, presence, and silent understanding between two figures — one kneeling, the other standing beside her, laying a hand gently on her shoulder. The composition draws on the biblical theme of Annunciation, not as a divine proclamation but as an intimate, earthly solidarity between women. The phrase "I am with you, dear" becomes a new annunciation — not from heaven to earth, but from one human to another, offering the reassurance that even in the most vulnerable moments of waiting, hope, or grief, you are not alone.

The standing figure symbolizes a spiritual or inner companion, a presence that appears in the landscape of transformation — where the potential of life meets the tension of uncertainty. It's a visual prayer for those experiencing the silence of unanswered desires or navigating the long path toward motherhood. In this painting, presence itself becomes sacred, and shared vulnerability becomes strength.

PERICHORESIS SERIES 

“Perichoresis" (ancient Greek περιχώρησις - “interpenetration"), a theological term meaning the mutual penetration of divine parts into each other, to describe a unique union that does not imply mixing or merging, but emphasizes an indivisible unity.

Daria explores the theme of new sexuality, deliberately choosing a term from theological treatises for her series of works.

With this gesture, she protests against the dictates of religion, the church's manipulation and pessimization of human sexual manifestations and physicality, the false meanings and concepts with which religions have burdened, and instead of building true connections and bridges for man and God, they build walls.

“Perichoresis" for her is a beautiful and complex term that describes the fusion of the divine and the material. Having grown up in the Protestant tradition within an Orthodox society, Daria notes the common separation of sexuality from divinity in all these religions, while she sees sexuality as the clearest 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, the Garden of earthly pleasures. For the artist, sexual paradise is a safe environment, complete trust, acceptance, the opportunity to open up and discover the Other, the opportunity to learn to be loved and to love.

Love is an environment where merging does not dissolve in another person, but on the contrary, strengthens the individuality of each and enriches each other.

Thus, the artist reminds that the division into the sublime and the low in love is artificial, and overcoming this division can make life more beautiful. The heroes of her paintings are immersed in the enigmatic space of love, and sometimes there are ironic scenes that balance the degree of sublimity.