Relics of a Drowned World: Art Center Sarasota sculptures speak of lost and found beauty

“Through Sorrow into Light ” sheds light on Natasha Dikareva’s otherworldly sculpture at Art Center Sarasota.

Ceramic pieces in flowing organic forms. Female faces and figures predominate. But these aren’t earthly women. They’re more like religious icons. Holy relics of a drowned world, perhaps. Because these artifacts seem corroded. Their surfaces are rusty, cracked and stained. It looks like years and years of water damage, as if they’d been submerged below the waves for centuries.

That’s my first impression. I wasn’t entirely wrong.

This exhibition’s blue-and-white color scheme is a dead giveaway. But I missed it.

Dikareva is a Ukrainian expatriate, born and raised in Kyiv. Her art teachers pushed Soviet realism. Individualist that she is, Dikareva colored outside state-approved lines. And invented her own artistic iconography. One that spoke of beauty, but also loss. After that, she left the country.

This artist’s lost civilization is a realm of the imagination. In 2023, her mournful mythology got far too real. Dikareva’s broken artifacts sharply captured Russia’s brutal violation of her homeland. A weirdly cruel coincidence. But the artist embraced it. “My sculptures stand as silent witnesses to our world’s discord and destruction,” Dikareva says. “Like guardians of a shattered realm, they remain standing among the wreckage.”

This show offers many such tacit guardians. (Female figures are the clear majority.) Most of these sculptures are stoneware ceramics, which Dikareva fired, stained and glazed.

Dikareva’s “Defender’s Zen” (2024) instantly catches my eye. A female figure, sitting in the lotus position, eyes turned skyward. She wears a crown of clouds, a billowing pale nimbus floating gracefully above her head. A peaceful detail, but others are disturbing. The woman’s robe is shredded open at the front. The rips are in parallel lines. As if some giant claw had slashed it. Maybe it did. But she didn’t get up. This Defender stays put. Tides and currents move. But nothing moves her. You sense she’s been sitting for measureless time.

“She Holds the Sun” (2024) is another female defender. This woman stands – and stands her ground. Instead of flowing hair, she’s also adorned with clouds. Her face is placid and meditative but determined. She gently holds the sun in her hands. She’s not draining its energy. It’s a spiral of life-giving power but for others, not for her. And the sun within her grasp seems oddly small and fragile. She’s clearly protecting it.

“Searching for Answers” (2023) hits painfully close to the artist’s home. It’s the bust of a woman who carries a great weight. Her towering headdress resembles a bombed-out building. (It looks like rows of blackened, empty windows like the eye sockets of a skull. The reference is clear.) The sculpture’s texture has a crackling, metallic sheen, like it had been hit with a blast of fire. That implicit damage speaks of trauma. The woman still seems hopeful, but there’s sadness in her eyes.

Dikareva’s personal pantheon isn’t limited to female avatars. Eyes are another recurring icon. In these pieces, you’ll see an eye in an open palm; a third eye in the middle of a forehead; and an all-seeing eye in a swirl of cosmic chaos. The world of her private myth is vast. Her sculpture “Ganesha for Ukraine” (2022) is the only visitor from a different belief system. The Hindu deity’s identity is unmistakable: an anthropomorphic, deep blue, Indian elephant, who’s enthroned, and crowned with gold. This figure of power looks you straight in the eye. Not charging yet. But ready to fight.

Dikareva’s sea-changed relics remind us of lost civilizations. They also urge us not to lose the civilizations we’ve still got left, and stand up to the thugs who’d destroy them. Ukraine is clearly on her mind. But this self-exiled artist hasn’t abandoned hope.

“These sculptures aren’t just artifacts of war,” she says. “They’re beacons of transformation, inviting us to confront the darkness within and emerge into the light of healing and renewal.

Let’s hope her invitation is accepted.

Briefly noted

“Through Sorrow into Light” runs simultaneously with three other exhibitions at Art Center Sarasota. If you can get there, why not see them all? Here’s a whirlwind tour.

“Great Artists Steal” is a juried show with a cheeky criterion. It invited area artists to rip-off other artists. Michael Parkinson rose to the challenge. “Self Portrait” (circa 1989, 2021) was his entry, a portrait of the artist by the artist. The artist he ripped off? Parkinson’s oversized, acrylic-on-paper selfie is a shameless imitation of Chuck Close’s style. Parkinson’s smug self-portrait sports sunglasses, smokes a big cigar, and smiles wickedly. Too cool for school. (This painting only won a Merit Award. But it’s my favorite in this show.)

“Michael Kinsey, Views from the New Horizon” offers a visually stunning array of Kinsey’s larger-than-life photographic portraits of local African-Americans. Here, my favorite is “Gale Fulton Ross” (2022). This artist is a true force of nature, and Kinsey captures her power and self-confidence. (Ross insisted on wearing a paint-stained artist’s smock when he took this photo). It’s one of many powerful portraits, all drawn from Sarasota Magazine's "Listening to Black Voices" series.

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“Angela Pilgrim, Rooted in Spirit” is a series of her masterful prints. Most are also portraits, mostly of the artist’s family members. But the styles of Pilgrim’s prints are incredibly varied. Some don’t even look like prints. At first glance, I thought the artist created “Aunt Eva in Her Reflection Room” (2024) with colored pencil or chalk. Nope. It’s a Xerox color transfer print. The subtle gradations of color in Pilgrim’s portrait are hard enough to do by hand. To do it with a Xerox machine? That’s no less than magical.

‘Through Sorrow Into Light’

Continues through April 20, at Art Center Sarasota, 707 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota; (941) 365-2032; artsarasota.org

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Art Center Sarasota show speaks of beauty and loss through sculpture