Anastasiya Tarasenko “The Hands that Feed”

Monya Rowe Gallery

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Monya Rowe Gallery presents the first New York solo exhibition by Anastasiya Tarasenko titled The Hands that Feed.

Tarasenko’s new suite of small paintings are social critiques on the impact of the hidden hypocrisies ubiquitous in our culture. Politics, religion and consumerism are some of the subjects touched upon. Marked by Tarasenko’s morbid, but playful, sense of the absurd, there is an overarching theme of authoritarianism and complicity running through the works.

Embracing the anxiety that accompanies our current times, in The Disaster Artist (2020), the artist is depicted working in a burning room while watching a nuclear explosion on a television screen. It could be a metaphor for the current political and social climate. A rat chews at her foot and a dog is humping the other leg. This tension and complexity is dominant throughout the exhibition. The paintings frequently incorporate confrontational sexuality, feminist undertones and uncomfortable imagery. “Mommy” and “Daddy” archetypes are depicted alongside works capturing the spirit of propaganda posters and Post-WW2 advertising. Tarasenko critiques convention by asking the fundamental question of how we are complicit in enabling the large and exploitative structures around us. By bringing these fantastical images to life, Tarasenko explains that “In some ways, I’m trying to reverse engineer the indoctrination.”

Anastasiya Tarasenko (b. 1989, Kiev, Ukraine.) received a MFA from the New York Academy of Art, NY and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). In 2019 she completed the PLOP Artist Residency, London, U.K. Her work was recently exhibited in a solo exhibition at Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston. Recent group exhibitions include Field Projects, NY; Anna Zorina Gallery, NY and Monya Rowe Gallery, NY. Tarasenko’s work is in the collection of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia. This is her first solo exhibition in New York. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.