Nataliya Hines
“Cicada”
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
40” x 30”
$5,500
“Cicada”
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
40” x 30”
$5,500
Cicada takes its name from the insect known for its life cycle, a nod to the rhythms of history. While time moves forward, history doesn’t necessarily repeat; as George R.R. Martin suggests, it rhymes. This work explores those echoes as I attempt to depict the face of an emerging intelligence.
The subject dominates the composition. Stained-glass wings extend behind a moth-winged
corona, breaking into the matte black border. At its center, where a face might appear, is a
“lover’s eye” containing both of the subject’s eyes. It is a face, yet not quite.
She wears a dress inspired by an Edwardian lingerie gown, a lace garment popular in the early
20th century. Her wooden hands suggest a union of the natural and artificial, the handmade and
mechanical.
Victorian and Edwardian fashion recurs throughout my work, often referencing 18th-century
silhouettes and their fascination with automatons. I return frequently to the mid-to-late 19th
century, an era shaped by industrialization and the early rise of modern identity. These garments, often subtly mass-produced, point to early intersections of technology, selfhood, and replication.
In Cicada, past and present blur as we face a new phase in our ongoing transformation.
The subject dominates the composition. Stained-glass wings extend behind a moth-winged
corona, breaking into the matte black border. At its center, where a face might appear, is a
“lover’s eye” containing both of the subject’s eyes. It is a face, yet not quite.
She wears a dress inspired by an Edwardian lingerie gown, a lace garment popular in the early
20th century. Her wooden hands suggest a union of the natural and artificial, the handmade and
mechanical.
Victorian and Edwardian fashion recurs throughout my work, often referencing 18th-century
silhouettes and their fascination with automatons. I return frequently to the mid-to-late 19th
century, an era shaped by industrialization and the early rise of modern identity. These garments, often subtly mass-produced, point to early intersections of technology, selfhood, and replication.
In Cicada, past and present blur as we face a new phase in our ongoing transformation.
