Wilting, a Alena Solomonova's Exhitibion

The project is created in mixed media. Each work is based on a printed photo - a self-portrait, on top of which glass with a substance applied to it distorts the photo is placed. Also in each photo is a part of a dried plant. The project explores the theme of withering and the desire to preserve youth. Dried flowers and plants in each photo symbolize the natural process of withering, they reflect not only physical but also emotional aging, the accumulation of experience and internal transformation. The plants are dry and lifeless, but they still have beauty. They are beautiful in their frozen form, but at the same time very fragile. The blurred surface, covered with different substances, serves as a metaphor for modern attempts to hide the traces of time. It is a hint at social media filters, retouching and masks that we use to conform to beauty standards and avoid accepting changes in our appearance. The blurriness also adds a sense of ephemerality, fragility and detachment, emphasizing that such attempts only temporarily create an illusion, without canceling reality. In creating these portraits, I talk to myself about what it means to grow old, to change, to let go of the old me. And I try and learn to see the beauty in these changes – like a dried flower that tells its own story.

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