Making the series
Slava Kryzhanovskyi drew the figures by hand on a graphics tablet, using photographic references. Colour and glossy surfaces turn different bodies into a shared set of “toys”.
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Toys
An exhibition by Slava Kryzhanovskyi addressing the body as a changing form shaped by technology and imagination. Bright, anonymous figures suggest possible transformations of the human body and raise questions about access to those futures.
About the TOYS series
A figure without a face
The anonymous figures leave room for viewers to recognise themselves. Drawing on body positivity and ugly beauty, the series questions conventional hierarchies of attractive and unattractive bodies.
About the project
Toys asks what happens to the body when technological possibility outpaces our understanding of being human. Vulnerable and finite, the body is also a changing form: knowledge, perception and experience continually alter what it can do and how it is imagined.
The exhibition treats artificial intelligence, biohacking and bodily modification as invitations to speculate. If organs can be replaced and abilities extended, where does the self reside, and who will determine the terms of its improvement? Rather than offering a prediction, the project creates one possible situation in which to rehearse these questions.
Bright, impersonal figures stand in a white void, posing as potential consumers of an upgraded self. They seem ready for transformation without knowing what they will receive. Beneath the playfulness lies a question of access and power: who will be offered another life, and by what principle will the future select its participants?