Ukraine ablaze

Speciality

Technique:

Charcoal drawings

Year:

2022

In recent years I have used drawing for reworking found images of modern life festivity, which people post on Instagram. In the “Speciality” (a category used to denote the third-wave coffee shops) series, I search for vernacular photos from outside coffee shops in Romania representing democratic and privileged consumption in a modern city. Focusing on body positions, gestures, clothes, and brands, these depersonalised pictures represent various carefree urban leisure practices that can be shared with others. Somehow, these images from third-wave cafés have something in common with poses of sitters from the interwar avant-garde drawings. This celebration of life takes place against the backdrop of an ongoing war, with flashbacks and strange inhuman entities in the background.

Vitaly Yankovy. Speciality