<!--AI_Augmented_Iconography--> Statement
My work examines the evolving intersection of technology, ideology, and human identity, visualizing a future where bodies, emotions, and belief systems are altered, augmented, and commodified. <!--Augmented Iconography--> concept emerges from this exploration, blending historical religious symbolism with contemporary digital culture to interrogate the power structures shaping our perception of reality.
Rooted in Orthodox iconography, I adopt the visual language of sacred art—halos, gold leaf, rigid frontal figures—merging them with programming scripts, emojis, and algorithmic logic. The traditional is disrupted by the digital, creating a visual system where belief is coded, faith is data, and identity is an interactive construct.
Materiality is central to my process. I employ hand-stitching, embroidery, and textile work, techniques historically associated with feminine labor and Ukrainian traditions, to challenge the sterility of digital systems. Fabric becomes a tactile database, embroidered with code, binary sequences, and internet symbols—handcrafted inscriptions of an era dominated by AI. These stitches mirror the fragmentation of identity in a world mediated by technology, a physical manifestation of digital surveillance and ideological conditioning.
By fictionalizing and archiving contemporary digital mythology, my work proposes new ways of understanding our present condition. What does it mean to exist in a system that tracks, categorizes, and monetizes our emotions? How does ideological conditioning manifest through algorithms and corporate influence? My concept reimagines these tensions, offering a space where human touch resists the disembodiment of digital life and where the sacred is rewritten through the logic of the machine.
My mission is to challenge the forces that shape human identity and perception in the digital age by creating work that provokes critical reflection on technology, power, and ideology.
For the broader community and society, my motivation is to preserve and amplify the human experience in an increasingly automated world. I seek to create spaces—both physical and conceptual—where people can pause, question, and resist passive participation in systems that reduce them to data. My work serves as a call to guard what makes us human, urging viewers to critically engage with the realities of surveillance, misinformation, and digital control before they become irreversible.