Her practice encompasses graphics, painting, and installations, and is based on an attentiveness to and reinterpretation of familiar phenomena. By combining diverse elements and reimagining ordinary objects, she highlights overlooked connections between people, experience, and time. Combining classical and contemporary approaches in experimental processes, Aksana carefully interacts with forms and surfaces, paying attention to the juxtaposition of materials.
The goal of her practice is to create external and internal spaces for reflection on the intersection of personal and collective histories and the role of women within them. This series unfolds as an exploration of the female body and identity subjected to institutional control and erasure in the context of the historical experience of Magdalene laundries. The thin fabric of the sheets freezes in time, becoming an extension of the walls, preserving and containing the history of what happened. By revealing traces of presence and embodying corporeality, fabric points to women’s journey through this historical process, prompting us to rethink and empathize.
The works reference contemporary figurative art and lack the classical completeness of academic drawing. The monochrome palette heightens the sense of time and highlights physical form, while texture in the form of seams, folds, stains, and abrasions becomes part of the artistic language. Repeated gestures and blurred contours emphasize the female body as a field of constraint and isolation, resisting complete disappearance.