Valeriya Shebelnichenko, Portale aperto nell'amplesso..., Acrylic on Canvas, 2022

"Portale aperto nell’amplesso dello Svadhisthana: Toccarsi" (eng: Open portal into the intercourse of Svadhisthana: Touching) is an original painting created by Ukrainian artist Okno in 2022. Acrylic and sanguine on canvas personally constructed by the artist. The figure of the artist appears in the artwork, bared in form and emotion. Curved and sinuous black lines embrace the body's forms, accentuating its roundness and chiaroscuro. You can glimpse the marks of the sanguine used to sketch the figure. The colors are perfectly complementary, light blue, pink and yellow. The face is skillfully painted in the realist style, but the artist chooses to paint it in shades of red, a color that symbolically refers to passion and love. The background is presented as a non-space, a tunnel that breaks away from the conception of ordinary reality. Dreamscapes and deep perspectives are often found in the artist's works, traits closely related to her life experience and her artist name: Okno, the window to another world (ed. from Russian). In the work, the artist wanted to immerse herself in her own intimacy in order to understand and analyze it. Svadhidthana is the second chakra, the chakra connected to sexuality. The Sanskrit name "Svashisthana" means "sweetness" but also "the abode of self," precisely because desires, needs, aspirations and impulses originate from there. The painting is thus a magnificent visual quest intent on discovering the state of the artist's second chakra. Valeriya Shebelnichenko, aka Okno, was born in Ukraine in 1996. Painter and performer, she currently lives and works in the city of Turin, Italy. She moved to Italy in 2004 and studied at the Art and Music High School in Forlì, obtaining her diploma in 2016. with her emotional approach to painting and performance, she manages to involve the viewers by making them part of her experiences. Okno’s works have been shown in the cities of Venice, Milan, Turin, Pisa, Rimini, Forlí, Edinburgh, she arrived as a finalist in the Arte Laguna Prize and exhibited in the spaces of the Venetian North Arsenale. Her career, albeit young, denotes various collaborations, aimed at creating an artistic dialogue that involves multiple senses.