Death Given

Dilara Akbal is a contemporary Turkish artist who creates primely digital illustrations and works with watercolours. Her densely populated images are very much reminiscent of trauma-dealing mechanics of the mind, when traumas get fractionalized in myriads of stories and characters in order to ease the blow to the psyche, waiting for the right moment to "blow up".

Most of @cryptoartista's works are an ongoing attempt to archive her own bodily movements as a trace of the materiality most likely to disappear in the very near future.

The end of the day is often perceived as the "small death". It is also often the moment in the day when one has time to go through the news of the day. Leading digital artist @xcopy brings our attention to the days of doomscrolling and being caught, often voluntarily, in the infernal loophole of the negative informational field.

Portugal-based artist @oficinastk makes often conceptual and minimalistic in style artworks. The series of still life compositions, historically associated with the depiction of mortality, is at times animated. Strangely, in this case the liveliness that movements usually adds to still images brings the composition closer to that of a "portrait vivant– another historical genre when people where standing still depicting a scene during a live event. And this in turn, takes us back to the immobility of death.

Dark summonings are stereotypically portrayed in sinister environments, as if the nature of the things being called upon from the other world requires a mirroring surrounding for them to feel homely. In this image by @ghostshoes the uncanny feeling comes from the clash between the wealthy interior of this European upper-class family's house, the calm composure of the woman reading her newspaper and the apparition of a black goat, elegantly sitting of the floor. Pointing out to a certain normalization or even sophistication in the manner of the modern "summonings", chilling questions are posed.

@hackatao were one of the first OGs in the field. Their works are often provocative in their head-on message, yet subtle and multilayered on detailed on closer inspection, with many details filling the characters their create. References to death come up quite often in their practice in different form. Santa Muerte, a god turned goddess, became a sort of revolutionary leader , protector of the working class and marginalized communities in Mexico and parts of Central America.