BRUISE SERIES
2020-ongoing, watercolor on printed linen, dimensions variable

“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. For example, in the artist’s native country of Belarus, the nation united in response to the rigged election of 2020. These protestors shared the resulting scars of having faced aggressive measures of suppression and brutal detainment across various media platforms, bringing public awareness to the human rights abuse in hopes of achieving justice in the future. These events have triggered Bliumis’ watercolor on linen series, Bruises. Each bruise painting is numbered in reference to statistics of human suffering. The traumas range from serious to playful, from political prisoners and refugees to unrequited celebrity crushes. 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.