Between silence and flesh:
the bodily series
the bodily series
Nastya Norway
October 10, 2025
Sasha Kremenets, Hammerfest, Norway
Sasha Kremenets, Hammerfest, Norway
For Nastya Norway as for the artist the act of drawing is inseparable from the act of witnessing. Her Bodily Series arises not merely as an aesthetic project but as a critical experiment in empathy: an inquiry into how the human body carries, distorts, and releases inner tension. The artist illustrates the concept of silence so much familiar to everyone living under the Polar circle through color and form. The series, deeply personal yet universally resonant, situates itself within the geography of the North, a landscape of silence and extremes where emotional expression often takes the form of stillness, withdrawal, or muted intensity.
In this northern context, the concept of piblokto the Arctic’s so-called “speechless scream,” a phenomenon described among Inuit and northern peoples as a sudden, unmediated emotional eruption becomes a key metaphor. For Nastya Norway, the body in her drawings embodies a visual piblokto: a silent outburst, a frozen gesture that carries within it both pain and transcendence.
In this northern context, the concept of piblokto the Arctic’s so-called “speechless scream,” a phenomenon described among Inuit and northern peoples as a sudden, unmediated emotional eruption becomes a key metaphor. For Nastya Norway, the body in her drawings embodies a visual piblokto: a silent outburst, a frozen gesture that carries within it both pain and transcendence.
The body as threshold and witness
Each work in the Bodily series emerges from lived proximity. The figures friends, lovers, close acquaintances, and most intimately, the artist’s brother are captured not as subjects of observation but as mirrors of shared vulnerability. The drawings hold their movement at a threshold: gestures are paused mid-flow, energy suspended between interior and exterior. This temporal suspension is essential; it produces a tension between stillness and vibration, silence and potential sound.
The body, in these works, functions as both boundary and medium, a site through which psychic forces pass, but also where they become trapped. This duality is perhaps most acute in Cocoon, where the enveloped red figure accompanied by the phrase “I’m not in the cocoon” becomes an emblem of resistance to enclosure. The cocoon is not only a personal metaphor for mental illness, specifically the experience of artists brother’s schizophrenia, but also a universal metaphor for the Northern condition: the insulation of bodies and voices, the survival instinct that both protects and isolates.
Each work in the Bodily series emerges from lived proximity. The figures friends, lovers, close acquaintances, and most intimately, the artist’s brother are captured not as subjects of observation but as mirrors of shared vulnerability. The drawings hold their movement at a threshold: gestures are paused mid-flow, energy suspended between interior and exterior. This temporal suspension is essential; it produces a tension between stillness and vibration, silence and potential sound.
The body, in these works, functions as both boundary and medium, a site through which psychic forces pass, but also where they become trapped. This duality is perhaps most acute in Cocoon, where the enveloped red figure accompanied by the phrase “I’m not in the cocoon” becomes an emblem of resistance to enclosure. The cocoon is not only a personal metaphor for mental illness, specifically the experience of artists brother’s schizophrenia, but also a universal metaphor for the Northern condition: the insulation of bodies and voices, the survival instinct that both protects and isolates.
Piblokto and the northern condition
Living and working in the North means existing in a landscape that amplifies silence. The Arctic space, vast, white, echoing often suppresses language, creating conditions where expression must take other forms. The piblokto, a condition historically recorded among Arctic peoples as a kind of hysteria or trance, can be understood as a culturally specific response to this excess of silence: when the landscape itself swallows the voice, the body becomes its substitute.
Norway’s drawings visualize precisely this speechless cry. The gestures of her figures, the outstretched arms, the contorted poses, the empty eyes, echo the moment before or after sound, when language collapses into physical vibration. Her red, blue, and black color fields suggest the sensory extremes of the Arctic environment, blood against snow, night against light, heat against absence. The “Bodily Series” thus becomes not only a personal diary but also a northern phenomenology of silence and rupture.
Living and working in the North means existing in a landscape that amplifies silence. The Arctic space, vast, white, echoing often suppresses language, creating conditions where expression must take other forms. The piblokto, a condition historically recorded among Arctic peoples as a kind of hysteria or trance, can be understood as a culturally specific response to this excess of silence: when the landscape itself swallows the voice, the body becomes its substitute.
Norway’s drawings visualize precisely this speechless cry. The gestures of her figures, the outstretched arms, the contorted poses, the empty eyes, echo the moment before or after sound, when language collapses into physical vibration. Her red, blue, and black color fields suggest the sensory extremes of the Arctic environment, blood against snow, night against light, heat against absence. The “Bodily Series” thus becomes not only a personal diary but also a northern phenomenology of silence and rupture.
Materiality and language
Formally, the Bodily Series employs a reduced palette primarily red, black, white, and blue, evoking not only flesh and blood but also the chromatic minimalism of Arctic light. The flat plastic surface, as the artist describes, is intentional: it denies illusionistic depth, insisting instead on the tension between surface and sensation. The line, often continuous and unbroken, performs like breath mechanical yet intimate.
The inclusion of text functions as rupture within image a curatorial gesture that inserts language as material rather than as explanation. In this way, the phrase becomes both title and scream, a conceptual piblokto within the drawing.
The transition from Cocoon to Weeping marks a profound shift in the series from empathy to mourning. When the brother dies, the dialogue between bodies turns into an echo. The drawing Weeping stages this echo as an impossible communication. The childlike phrase inserted into the composition recalls a shared past, transforming the image into a site of memory and loss.
In curatorial terms, this sequence could be seen as a diptych of thresholds, life and death, voice and silence, presence and absence, forming the emotional architecture of the series.
Formally, the Bodily Series employs a reduced palette primarily red, black, white, and blue, evoking not only flesh and blood but also the chromatic minimalism of Arctic light. The flat plastic surface, as the artist describes, is intentional: it denies illusionistic depth, insisting instead on the tension between surface and sensation. The line, often continuous and unbroken, performs like breath mechanical yet intimate.
The inclusion of text functions as rupture within image a curatorial gesture that inserts language as material rather than as explanation. In this way, the phrase becomes both title and scream, a conceptual piblokto within the drawing.
The transition from Cocoon to Weeping marks a profound shift in the series from empathy to mourning. When the brother dies, the dialogue between bodies turns into an echo. The drawing Weeping stages this echo as an impossible communication. The childlike phrase inserted into the composition recalls a shared past, transforming the image into a site of memory and loss.
In curatorial terms, this sequence could be seen as a diptych of thresholds, life and death, voice and silence, presence and absence, forming the emotional architecture of the series.
Critical Context and References
Nastya Norway’s work can be placed within a broader constellation of artists who engage the body as an expressive and conceptual field:
The Bodily Series articulates a paradox: it is both deeply personal and regionally universal. The figures’ stillness mirrors the frozen time of the Arctic; their gestures echo the silent cry of piblokto.
Nastya Norway’s work can be placed within a broader constellation of artists who engage the body as an expressive and conceptual field:
- Egon Schiele and Käthe Kollwitz for their visceral line and psychological intensity;
- Louise Bourgeois for the bodily as architecture of trauma;
- Anna-Eva Bergman and A K Dolven, artists of the North, for their meditative engagement with Arctic silence;
The Bodily Series articulates a paradox: it is both deeply personal and regionally universal. The figures’ stillness mirrors the frozen time of the Arctic; their gestures echo the silent cry of piblokto.
October 10, 2025
Sasha Kremenets
Hammerfest, Norway
Sasha Kremenets
Hammerfest, Norway
