Maya Golyshkina | Will you smoke me?

Central to Golyshkina’s practice is her body, a tool she employs to provoke the viewer while simultaneously exposing her vulnerability. Following a lineage of artists such as Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing, Golyshkina challenges stereotypes, particularly those promoted by social media in an increasingly image-obsessed world.

Golyshkina’s work is deliberately imperfect: Her costumes are hand-made from cheap materials with crudely-applied paint and her photographs bear visible traces of digital manipulation. By embracing the rough edges that are typically excluded from sanitised public personas, she confronts the superficiality of social media and the excesses of modern society.