Hexagram 52 1984

Editor: This is Oleksandr Aksinin's "Hexagram 52," made in 1984, an engraving of some sort, probably using ink and maybe other media like drawing or printmaking. There's a stillness and a sense of archaic ritual in this work that intrigues me. What do you see in this piece? Curator: This print deeply resonates with the political climate of 1984, and the cultural context from which Aksinin was operating. Born and working in the Soviet Union, his symbolic landscapes critiqued authoritarian power structures through surreal and esoteric imagery. What might the stoic, kneeling figure represent, framed by those rigid, geometric forms? Editor: I hadn't really thought about it politically. To me, it looked almost spiritual, maybe? But with the dragon, and what looks like a tent city in the background, I am really just not sure. Is it some kind of oppressive structure surrounding her? Curator: Exactly! Consider the I Ching's hexagram 52, "Keeping Still, Mountain." Aksinin uses symbolism here, appropriating and subverting visual language, to talk about oppression, totalitarianism and social inertia. What does "keeping still" mean when agency is stripped away, when protest is suppressed? How might the female figure's stillness be a quiet act of defiance, even resistance? Editor: So, her stillness isn’t necessarily peaceful; it's almost imposed. That changes everything about how I see it. And what about the dragon? Curator: The dragon might be interpreted as power—imperial power. It reinforces those structures, reinforcing the oppression, making her more still, but there's still agency with how she decides to relate to that structure and those restraints. How the artist decides to speak within censorship. Editor: I never would have arrived at this reading on my own, but you’ve completely opened up the piece for me. Thanks! Curator: Absolutely. By considering the artist’s background and time, we can start to engage with it from a perspective that may be at first invisible, but powerful.