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With Beans paintings, Polina states: “No matter how long may the war last, everything will end with spring and fresh sprouts.” In the portrait of the woman with a bean in her mouth, she also highlights the creative and life-giving power of women: not only in the literal sense but also in the sense of art and craft.
Beans, Diptych (2024)
Since her “Easter” project in 2018, Kuznetsova has been using the image of bean as a symbol of life, creation, and rebirth. However, one never knows for sure whether the bean or an egg will bring life. For Kuznetsova, it is about a hopeful doubt: will the new life emerge from this bean, after all? During the cold winter of 2024, amidst the continuing full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the symbol of bean emerged in her art again and became of even more importance to her.
