Imagination and concept intertwined
Valeriya N-Georg is an artist inspired by neuroscience, psychology and consciousness studies, who works with a range of media: drawing, printmaking, sculpture, digital and mixed media. She is interested in exploring the boundaries between the inner and outer body; between the physical and metaphysical; tangible and intangible. N-Georg combines digital production with making by hand and has developed experimental new techniques for making monotype prints, based on layered acrylic gel on boards and light box installations (Figure 1), which she scans, collages and manipulates digitally to create large scale digital prints. Her work is deeply influenced by sources such as Antonio Damasio’s research on the relationship between the brain and the consciousness, the role of emotions and feelings for our life-regulating processes and mental representations of our body states, or Dr. Bruce Lipton’s ideas about interactions between mind and body and the processes by which cells receive information.
Valeriya N-Georg completed MA Visual Arts in Printmaking at University of the Arts London in 2014, since then she participated in many group shows, including a 6-month exhibition at the New York Hall of Science USA and an Art and Science exhibition at the UK Houses of Parliament called Tomorrow’s Child and accompanied by lectures from medical experts on early child development.
Her work was acquired by the Global Eye Art Collection, who also funded an additional commission on the subject of ‘Optogenetics’, the neuromodulation technique employed in behavioral neuroscience that uses a combination of techniques from optics to genetics to control the activity of the individual neurons in living tissue (Figure 2).
Valeriya’s first solo show “Corporis Fabrica” was held at the Lubomirov/Angus-Hughes Gallery in Hackney, London, with the special assistance of the Curator Iavor Lubomirov. An immersive print-based installation, in which scale and image combine to submerge viewers into a sense of their own physical self, a view from within, an experience of being both smaller and larger than themselves, of looking out from under their skin (Figure 3).
Valeriya N-Georg also collaborate for different projects with scientists and other artists. For the exhibition at the UK Houses of Parliament she collaborated with prenatal psychotherapist Kitty Hagenbach (MA, DIP, Psych). The artwork installation and the scientific abstract paper are titled ‘Deepest Imprints’ as during the baby’s developments in the womb, all of the mother’s emotional experiences imprints in the future human being and affect every aspect of life (Figure 4).
For another collaboration with the Oxford trained mathematician and sculptor Iavor Lubomirov, Valeriya has produced an image of the hormone of Oxytocin on translucent, layered acrylic gel, thus referencing the experience of working with someone else, of trust, anxiety and joy. Lubomirov has in turn disassembled this image into small pieces and built them into an upright cylindrical form, so that N-Georg’s image is both contained within his sculpture and also wrapped around it. By using transparent pieces of Perspex, and raising the work vertically, Lubomirov is also allowing light to come through N-Georg’s image, drawing out the translucency of the material and the visceral skin like quality of the image. In a sense, the work illuminates an inner experience (Figure 5).
“The gel material texture allows me to create artwork that looks like brain tissue—one of my main interests. My art uses drawn fingers referencing the human sense of touch, which is of a great importance, without it our human life would not be the same. A huge network of nerve endings and touch receptors in the skin controls our sense of touch. The brain gets an enormous amount of information about the texture of objects through our fingertips because the ridges that make up our fingerprints are full of sensitive mechanoreceptors, so our brain is able to control our reactions to the outside world. Human skin intrigues me, as it is the largest organ of the body. It is a membrane, both barrier and shield between inner and outer and at the same time it is that which connects our bodies to everything outside. It can provide the most intimate of experience and the most public, as it is what presents us to the world. The light box presentation illuminates the ink print made upon the gel surface and conveys a sense of a medical forensic examination on the surgeon’s table.” Valeriya N-Georg said.
Valeriya N-Georg is a member of Art & Science Collaborations Inc. and SciArt Center of New York where her works are selected and exhibited regularly together with other artists from all over the world inspired from different sciences. N-Georg’s work has been included in many private collections across UK, Europe and America.
Acknowledgements
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Footnote
Conflicts of Interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
