Stage Lights, Kitchen Nights

In her works, Sotnikova explores not only the boundaries of the visible, but also the invisible, exploring the transcendent interplay of communication, mimicry and soft power. In doing so, she explores themes such as transformation/fusion, beauty stereotypes, “mis-fitting”, sexualization, social role schemes, standardization and “soft power” phenomena. In the first step of her work, Sotnikova searches online classifieds for photos of used toys such as Barbie dolls, plastic horses or science fiction figures. The photos of the unknown authors are particularly direct and striking. Occasionally, the artist discovers an expression in them that is comparable to forensic photo documentation. In their pop-cultural style, all of the photos display strong clichés of beauty and femininity that have been communicated over decades, sometimes in sexualized form. Stereotypical images of people standardize and exert their influence on social value systems from an early age: subtle manipulation (soft power) through the communication of standardized images. Lucia Sotnikova’s photographic works are now created by photographing herself projecting these advertisement photos onto her own body with a projector and “imposing” these clichés on herself, so to speak. This results in grotesque mergers of her own body with the bodies, shapes and colors of the toy dolls. Like a kind of transformation or metamorphosis, new body worlds and new realities emerge. It is precisely in this dissonance between the public and the private, between the official and the secret, that the beauty and mystery of human communication lie. A source of inspiration for these new works is Ambrose Pratt’s book ‚The Lore of the Lyrebird‘, which describes the amazing abilities of these Australian birds of deception and mimicry. Just as the lyrebirds can imitate a variety of sounds and gestures, Sotnikova’s works delve into the world of mimicry and mismatch to allow us to reflect more deeply on the nature of communication and identity.