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Bio

Macha Pangilinan is a Russo-Filipino artist born in 1990 in Kurgan, Russia. She has lived and worked in Paris since 2014. A graduate of the Moscow State Academy of Art named after V. Surikov in 2013, she has developed an artistic practice that moves between fiction and reality, exploring the complexities of representation. Since 2020, she has been part of the artistic center POUSH, where she continues to engage with contemporary artistic discourse.

Her work is structured around two major themes: Paradise, an imagined universe that revisits the notion of idealized spaces, and Reality Check, a project that explores the visual narratives of daily life and the structures that shape our perception of reality. Through these two approaches, she reinterprets historical references and questions the power dynamics embedded in visual culture.

The Paradise series is inspired by traditional representations of utopia, particularly in religious iconography. Pangilinan’s approach disrupts the notion of the idealized body, challenging its historical objectification. Her work critically engages with the male gaze, echoing the Guerrilla Girls’ famous critique: "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" By portraying the male figure through a lens of sensuality and complexity, she questions established gender norms in visual art.

With Reality Check, she turns her focus to contemporary reality. This project presents a series of seemingly random images that reflect moments of daily life—visual snapshots of impactful events that grant equal visual importance to images of explosions and still lifes of family meals. By giving equal weight to these visual elements, she challenges conventional storytelling and the ways we assign significance to images.

Macha Pangilinan also explores the portrait as a dimension of her reality-based work, capturing the essence and personality of individuals around her. With a minimalist and subdued palette, she highlights skin, facial features, and expression. Each portrait becomes an intimate study, revealing the complexity and uniqueness of each subject while inviting the viewer to immerse themselves in emotion and intimacy.