Isorithm 20-2, 2021

Acrylic, oil, ink, dry media on panel, 16"x18"

Unframed

Courtesy of the Artist

The Isorithm series grew out of my research for Double Vision, a collaborative project with Andrea Steves and Francois Hughes. I located a Cold War era declassified military manual which gave step by step instructions on how to create maps that predict the impact of nuclear bomb airbursts; showing fatal and non- fatal casualty isorithms over particular types of habitable regions. I was struck by the immense tension between the elegant geometries and rational calculations of these maps, juxtaposed against the irrational chaos and mass destruction they represent. I draw on my personal experience of growing up in the USSR at the end of the Cold War and my identity as a Russian Ukrainian refuge. I channel the tension and fury of the current war in Ukraine and the Russian political climate now, to create charcoal and ink marks of empathy, made by gestures and physical movements that react to and synthesize the complex relationship between these countries.

These works attempt to reconcile nuclear threat rationalized through a mathematic formula by offering empathetic gestures to representations of war and destruction.

@yuliapink

http://www.yuliapink.com