Anna Irina Russell

Anna Irina Russell’s bodies born from her body are bodies that beat, that breathe, that swell to communicate with us through their dilation or contraction. Each time these bodies swell, something is at stake: the possibility of seeing ourselves a(mist)ed by the longing to breathe the same air, to share the same atmosphere, to be weighed down by the same humidity, to be suffocated by the same heat. Breathing together means being open to contagion.

With each pulse, Irina’s intermittent organisms invite us to join a community of beings connected by the desire -potentially frustrated- to communicate and, with it, to share the gears of their own vulnerability. Approaching the artistic act as one approaches a lover implies understanding that the works are, in the end, latent organisms open to being appealed to, vulnerable organisms that need, just as we do, to be sustained.

—Text by Blanca Arias