The Mother-Centipede

Diana Faksh is an artist of both Ukrainian and Syrian heritage. She is a member of the artistic groups LMDP and KYD.

As a monumental artist with a classical training background, Faksh's art practice is deeply rooted in iconography and traditional monumental techniques such as icon painting, fresco, mosaic, and stained glass.

The artist was born in 1993. From early childhood, Diana has been involved in art. Later, she enrolled in an art school, which combined general education with creative disciplines from the first to the eleventh grade.

"I started engaging in art from childhood, studying at an art-specialized school from the age of five. My mother used to say that I learned to hold a pencil before a spoon", said Diana in an interview with Druk. 

She attended the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv and the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy. Additionally, she participated in an MA exchange program at HEAD in Geneva, Switzerland.

The artwork of Diana Faksh explores bodies that can contain different characters, offering another possible vision of humanity in action. Her works are not abstract, just as the texts often do not carry direct contextual meaning. 

Drawing on her personal experience with monumental art, she moves beyond the grandeur of the object, transforming verticality into the horizontal. Among Faksh's original paintings are "About My Leg" (2023), "Black Lights" (2021), "Me and My Friend" (2021), "Amira" (2022), and many more. Diana Faksh's paintings for sale can be found on numerous platforms and websites.  

The artwork of Diana Faksh has a consistent theme—the emotional body, portrayed in various forms. Her works are not abstract; rather, they often use words, letters, architectural, or geometric elements, and stains to represent something bodily. These elements are layered with meaning, requiring time and attention to activate the space. Action and movement are central motifs, appearing in the form of text, body parts, or a phrase that conveys a specific proposition or information.

Since the russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Faksh's painting practice has focused on the concept of dual reality, exploring the quest for home, the process of nostalgia, the return to oneself, to memory, and the space of the unknown or blind spot. This is also a reflection on absence, the process of translation and transfer, or transformation as the possibility of an alternative.

As the artist said in the interview with Druk, she has experimented a lot. She has video projects and many collaborations with other artists. Additionally, she has practiced performance art, created installations, written texts for pop-opera, and composed music, among other things.