The PARADOXY series (2024) explores the subtleties of how the concept of beauty is perceived in contemporary society. In a world that privileges perfection and rejects contamination, is it possible to identify new, unconventional forms of beauty that represent greater levels of awareness?

Amidst the widespread promotion and celebration of products and techniques that prevent aging and contamination, marginalising those who do not fit stereotypical standards, the artist presents her ‘Warriors’: figures that have turned resilience and change into an opportunity, encouraging reflection on the potential concept of ‘ugly beauty’.

Defying society’s definition of ugliness, Anna Skoromnaya, through the intricate processes of ‘controlled corrosion’ employed with the OxiFLOWERing® technique, subjects materials to a cycle of morphological and chromatic transformation. Through this process, they age, corrode and evolve, creating a new and unexpected beauty, just as a flower can blossom from decay.

The series challenges current standards of aesthetic appeal, inviting viewers to recognise beauty in unexpected and unconventional places, and compelling them to confront the inherent plurality of the human experience and the richness expressed by its own contradictions.

The KINDERGARTEN cycle (2017) tackles the topic of the distortion and violation of children’s rights: the tragedy of children used as instruments of death in pseudo-religious terrorism in the installation Popcorn Machine, minors forced into slavery in the installation Cream Hand Mixer, and girls sold for marriage in the installation Cotton Candy Maker. The works in this unique kindergarten are based on the jarring juxtaposition between idealism and the cruel reality. With an air of normality, the space is filled with familiar children’s play equipment (swings, slides and coloured building blocks) and surrounded by the reassuring sounds of children recounting nursery rhymes. But spectators are then dragged without warning into a twisted fairy-tale dimension: the play items, a physical embodiment of how logic has been turned on its head, take on the shape of tools, and the children, embedded in the items, in turn become unwitting toys in the hands of adults, working instead of playing, struggling to carry bricks and wood, cleaning shoes, sewing clothes and breaking up stones.

The installations that make up the cycle take their names from the various machines that produce food enjoyed by children in parks: the Popcorn Machine, which makes corn explode, used for the installation on children martyred in wars, the Cream Hand Mixer, a mechanical mixer that turns endlessly, like the children exploited at work in the second installation, and finally the Cotton Candy Maker, a candy floss machine that references the sad veil of the many child brides sold as if they were objects.

The S.O.S. CODE cycle of artworks (2013) focuses attention on how thought processes and ways of living are being transformed in contemporary society. Following years of research into the human spirit, analysing humanity’s incentives and pitfalls, voids and ambitions, the artist offers an in-depth study of the condition of individuals within society and the relationships between them, seeking to identify their shared collective spirit. The S.O.S. CODE cycle describes an individual’s imaginary interior journey, reflecting on the lack of communication and interaction between people. This journey incorporates the fear of communicating and not being listed to in EMERGENCE, the complex mechanisms of psychological transformation in STEPS, the confused drifting that stems from living without fixed points of reference, including relationships, in ADRIFT, and the search for social awareness in HOMEWARD. Together they expose the mechanisms used to exclude people seen as different, and therefore dangerous, which are also used to weaken and suppress their rights.

The title S.O.S. CODE is taken from the famous Morse code ‘s.o.s.’, commonly taken to mean ‘Save Our Souls’, a message sent to convey an urgent request for help. The flashes of light in the various works in the cycle transmit the themes of each installation in Morse code; the specific requests for help, or for understanding, on which the artist wants the public to reflect, bearing witness to a collective journey that affects us all as human beings.