Night Scenarios, 2025

Kateryna Kolesnykova  

In this work, a woman sits with her hands pressed tightly against her eyes—a gesture that simultaneously signifies both an attempt not to see and a desire to block out the intrusion of the outside world. Her body is naked, tense, with sharply accentuated breasts, which once again serve as a marker of how society focuses its gaze on physicality while ignoring inner states. Instead of a face—silence and concealment: the woman disappears where the world expects her to be visible.

To the right of the figure, a large lunar sphere shines—a symbol of nocturnal thoughts, fears, and invisible pressure that intensifies in the darkness. To the left, a bat hangs upside down. It seems almost comical with white tufts on its ears, yet simultaneously embodies nighttime anxieties, intuitive doubts, and social prohibitions that return to the woman in the hours of silence. It is an animal that lives in the dark—just like the many imposed behavioral scripts that take root unnoticed within.

The dark background, densely filled with chaotic spirals of golden paint, resembles a stream of thoughts that never cease. These spirals are like whirlwinds of information—voices, judgments, and expectations that surround the woman even at night. In the center of this turbulent space, her gesture of closed eyes becomes not a sign of weakness, but an act of defense: an attempt to find a boundary between the external noise and her own inner space.

The painting captures a moment when a woman tries to protect herself from the nighttime “monsters" of social expectations—those that are invisible during the day, yet vividly present within. It is an image of a struggle for silence, for her own gaze, and for the right to see the world when she herself chooses to.

Series Trained Femininity
The painting is shipped rolled (unstretched, without a frame).
The image size is 110×90 cm, while the canvas measures 118×99 cm to allow extra margins on each side for stretching.