First, there is the old truth that “In the beginning is the body, ” with its desires, its powers, its manifold form of resistance to exploitation. As is often recognized, there is no social change, no cultural or political innovation that is not expressed through the body, no economic practice that is not applied to it.
- Silvia Federici “Beyond the Periphery of the Skin” 2020
The body is a document of social struggles. In the Alina Bliumis’ native country of Belarus, the nation united in response to the rigged election of 2020. Protesters who met severe police brutality shared their bruises and resulting scars. Having faced aggressive measures of suppression and unjust detainment across various media platforms, the opposition sought to bring public awareness to their human rights abuses in hopes of achieving future justice. These events triggered Bliumis’ watercolor on linen series titled Bruises. Each bruise painting is numbered in reference to statistics of human suffering, citing numbers of political prisoners and refugees. The artist represents the bruises as abstract patches of watercolor allowing the pigment to bleed into the weave of the linen in a style reminiscent of Color Field painting. Bliumis engages the expressionist style’s association with making an emotional impact through clarity of color and form with an emphasis on celebrating individual expression and freedom of subjectivity. Her paintings are spatial and alive to endow an immortality to the feelings and sensations that underlie these important moments throughout our own personal and collective history.
