The female form has always been prominent in art history. Thankfully, many female artists are taking it away from the male gaze and showing us how the mothers of everyone who has ever been born are a source of strength and something to be admired as an active body.
Yulya Pakalina’s art aligns with this correction of art history. The female body inspires her as a vessel for emotions, memories, and dreams. Her background in fashion and pivot to contemporary art allow her to explore this theme through performance, sculpture, and screen printing.
Her wearable textile pieces are a clear reference to her fashion background. While you could imagine them on a catwalk, there’s more to them than mere outfits – surreal, impractical and often disturbing – moving away from fashion and into contemporary art.
In Silenced, there’s a sense of intense drama as the work is shown worn underwater and surrounded by sculptures in a studio. The added text on the work creates a narrative that mirrors the intensity of the images of the work. The energy and movement in this work contrast with She Drowned in Honey, where the work binds the wearer to a wooden frame, stuck with nowhere to go. One work is freeing, the other contains, and it feels like a mirror of life where creativity can sometimes come all at once and propel you forward while other times it’s lacking, and nothing can get the creative juices flowing.
The plaster body cast in Some Ordered Body-Space Compositions feels like it’s holding its wearer back. Terrestrial bodies look like a fungus erupting from clothing, and Introduction to The Diptera allows for closer communication with nature. This notion of connecting with nature ties in closely with eco-feminism and the recognition that both women and nature have been oppressed together and that women have often been those who care for the earth.
This connection with nature is also seen in her sculpture Roots of the Mother, in which a flower bursts forth from a woman’s body, just as all life comes from the womb. Although the medium and look of the work may be strikingly different from those of her textile pieces, they adhere to the common themes running through Yulya’s work.
Her human-sized screenprints follow a similar theme. They showcase the female form, but this time, they are alongside alchemical symbols, presenting a more spiritual element of femininity.
Yulya Pakalina’s work reclaims the female form, moving beyond historical objectification to celebrate its emotional, physical, and spiritual depth. Whether through wearable sculptures, performances, or print, her art explores the complexities of femininity – its strength, struggles, and connection to nature. By intertwining personal and collective experiences, she crafts an intimate and universal narrative that challenges traditional perceptions while embracing the boundless potential of the female body.
More details on Yulya Pakalina’s work may be found on her website and Instagram.
