Rose ShakinovskyFloods India Kerala July 2024, 2024
Rose Shakinovsky’s conceptual approach to painting practice originates from found photographs of political upheavals such as Hurricane Beryl, which affected the island of Carriacou, in Grenada in 2024, the heavy rainfalls that caused landslides in the Southern region of Ethiopia in 2024 or the insurrection that took hold in Haiti in 2023, resulting in an escalation of violence and displacement of citizens, including women and children. Shakinovsky subjects these images to digital manipulation using basic computer filters until unexpected abstract forms emerge. Her work examines political, ecological and social disasters filtered through chance and recognition.
Shakinovsky’s paintings remove recognisable features of the original photographs through opaque digital processes, coupled with a slow and rigorous painting technique. In this way, Shakinovsky reduces the object to its formal and most basic qualities, focusing on its texture, colour and composition while simultaneously intuiting its conceptual possibilities. She refers to this as a process that reveals "parallel realities" that maintain the essence of the tragic source material while creating an entirely new visual language that escapes traditional abstract painting categories. Yet when placed beside the original photograph, and although marks might initially appear as mere dabs of paint, the compositional connections remain undeniable.
Within this body of work, Shakinovsky continues exploring her interest in art history and how various forms of language and storytelling can impact history. She does this while consciously working against and challenging traditional art historical representations.
