DETAILS
Acrylic and oil on canvas
110 x 75 cm
2024
 
DESCRIPTION
The work *The Taste of Fear: Emigration* depicts the daughter of my Ukrainian friend, who emigrated to Spain. Despite the joy of tasting a juicy, sun-kissed watermelon, I convey the contrast between childlike innocence and the mounting psychological pressure exerted by a grotesque swarm of growing grasshoppers — a symbol of fear, anxiety, threat and uncertainty in the face of a new, perhaps not-so-welcoming environment. The grasshoppers intensify the sense of a shift in reality: the familiar becomes alien, and the idyll turns into a disturbing illusion. The growing insects reflect not only external dangers but also the internal anxiety of the emigrant—and all the more so that of a child—in the face of the unknown.