Art From Hell

Following a link in Scoble's Weblog yesterday, I came upon a site that really moved me - as strange, amazing, upsetting and at times downright morbid as it is.

This seemingly innocent-looking young woman, Asya Schween, has produced and posted on her site a series of self-portraits that are equally as vainly narcissistic as they are horridly disturbing. With a sense for imaginary make-up (or a talented make-up-artist friend), creative prop selection, a digital camera, and amazing Photoshop wizardry, she has created a seemingly endless succession of haunting images that could easily rival movie stills from Wes Craven or David Lynch's most ambitious projects.

Or actually, no - they are vastly better. In quality, as in artistic expression. Make no mistakes - these are not the images of some amateur with a twisted mind. Each one is skillfully photographed, with exquisite light and make-up. The applied special-effects are extraordinary.

Yet the subject matter is so disturbing that you almost wished she had kept the images to herself. Mysteriously, her dark and expressive eyes almost always draw you into right into the picture. Her long nose, child-like lips and evenly-spaced teeth easily lend themselves to creating facial expressions that are both innocent and hideous at the same time.

You get the desperate urge to escape the Kafkaesque imagery by clicking on the "Next" button - yet despite your quiet anticipation in the seconds before the download completes, that on the next page you'll find a picture depicting anything but bizarreness, your hopes are almost always dashed (with a few random exceptions).

Even so, you can't stop looking at them. And since the website itself (and the related site, selling prints of her work) offer no real clue as to the motivation of why this woman has gone to these rather extreme means of expressing herself, you are inescapably left with the nagging question of what really drives her. She seems obsessed with horror-cliches of clowns, dolls, and death - her skin often made up to look like that of a slowly-decaying corpse or a ghost-child. Her images frequently revel in flirtations with insanity.

What hellish and tortured part of her subconscious (or conscience) is she trying to bring to the surface with this? And why put it out there for everyone to see? To shock? For the sick pleasure of knowing that you're inflicting disgust and jarring the mind of others, under the guise of artistic expression? To unleash an inner demon? Or is this simply an unusual cry for help in her struggle to fight off insanity?

In the end, I realize that after pondering all the options, I'm not so sure I *want* to know what really drives her ... but for anyone interested in at least scratching the surface and finding out some intriguing facts about her (such as that she is color-blind; despite being Russian, has an uncanny grasp of the English language, and displays an intelligence, that seems to walk the fine line between genius and madness) go read this amazing interview with Asya.