The Hospital Series by Asya Lukin

During the past three years, I had visited hospitals quite a few times. Fortunately, it also presented as an opportunity that allowed me to contemplate on the various people who were visiting and staying in hospitals. In everyday life, we interact with people who either live in our neighborhood or we work with. But in hospitals, this uniformity can’t be sustained, and we meet people from every corner of society. It feels like travelling to a very curious world. During my visits I made it a habit of sketching hospital habitants, which many times led to conversations with them as they were bored, and happy that somebody is interested in them not only from a medical point of view. These sketches and conversations were how this new series of works came to be.

The works include oil paintings, small gouache/acrylic paintings, as well as stop motion animation film. They depict the life of the inhabitants of a hospital. The works are based mostly on sketches I made from the observation. I am still working on this subject, and have been working on it throughout the lockdown. Coming to think of it, now, when we are all wearing masks, it is really exciting to continue to paint expressions of uncovered human faces.

Sometimes, when I tell people that my subject is people in a hospital, they often reply: “Such a depressive subject! Why are you dealing with it?” and so on. Actually, I don’t think that my works are either sad or depressive, they are not about that kind of emotions at all, they are even not about illness. They are about the human state and relationships in a vulnerable situation. In such circumstances, like being in a hospital, people are much more open and undisguised, they are much more real when they need to cope with some real problems in their lives. When I am working, I try to express compassion towards the people I depict as well as to show some funny sides of their behavior. And if I feel that the painting that I am working on has no trace of light inside, I throw it away, as it is crucial for me that there will be some kind of catharsis, as the way out of darkness is through empathy and humor.