Review: All the Snowflakes Must Die - Lena Semenkova Feature
by NDK Creative Artist
I did not understand this image, and yet I thought I did. But I didn’t until long after I had talked with Lena about it. As always, Lena gives precious few clues, but she does give a few as you’ll see in the interview that follows this review.
With a title like All the Snowflakes must die I was almost certain that this was about global crisis. I mean, here is a stark black and white image of a cloudy night sky providing the backdrop to the foreground images of two lampposts, one on the left dark, and the other lit brightly. Each has three globes. Perched atop one of those on the right lamppost is a snowy white owl looking out of the picture directly at us.
Another owl is perched in a tree, central to the picture and between the lampposts. Its spidery moss-entwined branches appear to be making every attempt to wrap technology and put it out.
Additional snowy white owls (spectators of this scene) perch on the left lamp and one more is in the background on the left.
Central to the picture between the forking branches of this mossy tree struggling to survive in a wintry landscape, clawing its way out of the thick blanket of snow is a web. Wrapped within its central and lower threads are the feet of a young woman, dressed all in white.
A white woman, all in white, even her hair is white. She is draped over the branches, her feet tangled and she is not struggling, she is simply limp, lifeless. Her head rests atop a mound of snow, her trunk and lower body are supported by two forked branches that cross the image horizontally in the lower third of the picture.
A wreath of white petals almost lost in the glare of the foreground light reflecting from the snow, adorns her hair. A spot of blood has spattered just below marring the snowy pillow that is her head’s resting place.
Her left arm encircles her waist, the elbow bloodied, the sleeve adorned by some stray rivulet. It seems she accepted her fate with some attempt at grace and dignity, despite the undignified pose.
To the left of this dead snowflake, at the base of the dead lamppost (its light is extinguished), is a skull half-buried in the snow, one socket blindly observing the scene before it. Snow falls in a sprinkle all around and the branches are laden with it.
The young woman appears to be almost a ballerina, and I remember Lena mentioning her dream of being a ballerina and am struck by the realization that the snowflake is a dead dream. The dead dream of being a dancer, a snowflake full of grace floating across the stage, demonstrating the grace, femininity and unique beauty of a woman.
As I consider this it seems to me that the world is captured in this web, and that the world is this seemingly fragile web of reality, the society that specializes in killing dreams dead, stifling them through the mechanism of its apparent wisdom, a wisdom that nonetheless kills people, in its own blindness, while convincing itself of the purity of its amply feathered wisdom; soft feathers that keep it from the cold light of daily living and dying.
The death of creative dreams, of the glorious feeling of hopeful fantasies lies here, spread-eagled on the beautiful soft, cold deathly blanket of the world’s reality. It is society we see here. Society killing creative individuality, while pretending it does not.
At the same time, I also perceive another level here. There is a relationship to global crisis, and specifically to climate change, but this is only I think, the superficial reality, as nothing Lena does with her art is superficial. Nothing. Lena’s work demands: that we look; that we study; that we consider at length the meaning.
TFA: Is the snowflake a global crisis themed picture?
Lena: It’s not a global crisis-themed picture. At least, I never thought about it that way. It was my Christmas card. And probably the way to destroy a bunch of disgusting childhood memories I still have. I was a snowflake on all the Christmas kindergarten shows. [Laughter]
Now I could ask the obvious gauche sort of question here, that any tabloid would be delighted to delve into, hunting dirty little secrets and imagining all kinds of trashy titillating garbage. But I refrain from engaging that prurient part of human nature.
Lena: The snowflake is horrible. It’s very poorly done.
No, it isn’t. It is very artfully done. The only thing that was horrible here was my initial superficial attention to what this image had to tell me. All the Snowflakes Must Die is a picture about the creative crisis that exists in a materialistic society that specializes in destroying what it believes are fantasies. But it is from fantasy that reality is drawn. Thus it is society—the collective mass of individuality—that makes nothing of reality, and not the artist who does so. The artist sees the reality all too clearly, and society doesn’t like that too much, for it forces each of us to consider who we really are, and what we are really doing. Thank you, Lena, for directing my attention so skillfully to what you had put right in front of me and others to see.
You can buy Lena Semenkova’s All the Snowflakes Must Die now. Click here to purchase.
Feature Index
- Lena Semenkova - Camouflage of Contradictions
- Digital Art and Photomanipulation
- Review: The Imitator
- Review: The Waiting
- Review: Superstar
- Interview Part 1
- Review: The Kingdom
- Review: Like a Bird
- Interview Part 2
- Review: Ghost Rider
- Review: All the snowflakes must die
- Interview Part 3
- Review: Red Skull
- Review: Prisoner of Conscience
- Review: War
- Conclusion
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Written by NDK Creative Artist · Filed Under Creative Artists, Features
Copyright © 2008 NDK Creative Artist. All Worldwide Rights Reserved.
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