Art exhibition Review

Anna Archen: Exploring the Human Body Experience

The visual language of the 21st century has completely revised the depiction of the human body. This is the result of avant-garde strategies that used the heritage of two world wars to normalize the traumatized body in the cityscape environment. One of the most important and influential texts is Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto.” This essay unites a lot of data on the subject and allows artists to use it in their creative work. 

This text will focus on Anna Archen’s creative practice. She is a Russian photographer based in London. Her work is a visual statement of how fluid the category of the human body is nowadays. Inspired by Dada movement artists and the idea of deconstruction described by Jacques Derrida, Archen creates striking digital collages that question the nature of what remains real in a world full of illusions. 

The photographer’s work tends to capture the illusion of a moving body, making her collages dynamic. In her understanding, the human body is not a representation of identity, gender, or age—it is a medium through which an artist works with their creative agenda. 

“Movement”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2023

In the piece “Movement,” Archen refers to Sarah Lucas’s renowned series “Nudes.” Like her spiritual teacher, the photographer tries to reinvent human flesh in a different medium. However, crafted through the fusion of digital photography and digital collage, “Movement” endeavors to encapsulate and transmit the essence of a dancer’s motion within a still frame. By capturing the dynamic shifts in form and the fluidity of human movement, Archen blurs the lines between reality and abstraction.

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

“Herbarium of Virginity” is another of Archen’s series that is worth mentioning. The photographer employs the metaphor of a herbarium to examine these tensions, portraying youth and beauty as fragile, transient phenomena that one might attempt to capture and preserve. She dissects the human form, transforming living bodies into delicate, two-dimensional specimens reminiscent of dried plants pressed into botanical archives.

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

The series’s heart is the juxtaposition of vitality and stillness. By fragmenting the body and blending it with botanical imagery, Archen creates works that feel simultaneously alive and frozen in time, their beauty tinged with haunting fragility. This process underscores the ephemeral nature of youth while evoking existential questions about humanity’s futile efforts to conquer time. 

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

These works are outstanding examples of how one artist can collect and rework data in her own way. Although Anna Archen’s practice contains numerous references, she tends to create her recognizable style, which has put her in the spotlight on the global art scene.

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

“Herbarium of Virginity”, Digital Photography, Digital Collage, 2024

Author: Alexandra Orlova, PhD

 

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