Original artwork description:

ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Annunciation
from the series Perichoresis
This painting reflects a deeply personal spiritual inquiry into the nature of motherhood, inspired by biblical symbolism and the sacred narrative of the Annunciation. The artist explores the experience of awaiting new life not as a given, but as a journey through uncertainty, longing, and faith.
Through symbolic figures and fruits of fertility, the work asks: Is motherhood the pinnacle of a woman’s life? Is it a divine gift? And what happens when it feels out of reach? These questions, posed not only to the viewer but to the artist herself, transform the traditional story of the Virgin’s annunciation into an intimate dialogue about infertility, hope, and the internal transformation required to believe in the possibility of creation.
The figures, entwined in stillness and awareness, embody a moment of threshold — a tender pause between the impossibility of the past and the hope of a different future. Pomegranates, wings, halos, and glowing earth tones unite in a visual language that honors both grief and faith, creating space for a renewed understanding of what it means to carry, or long to carry, life within.

PERICHORESIS SERIES
“Perichoresis” (ancient Greek περιχώρησις - “interpenetration”), a theological term meaning the mutual penetration of divine parts into each other, to describe a unique union that does not imply mixing or merging, but emphasizes an indivisible unity.
Daria explores the theme of new sexuality, deliberately choosing a term from theological treatises for her series of works.
With this gesture, she protests against the dictates of religion, the church’s manipulation and pessimization of human sexual manifestations and physicality, the false meanings and concepts with which religions have burdened, and instead of building true connections and bridges for man and God, they build walls.
“Perichoresis” for her is a beautiful and complex term that describes the fusion of the divine and the material. Having grown up in the Protestant tradition within an Orthodox society, Daria notes the common separation of sexuality from divinity in all these religions, while she sees sexuality as the clearest manifestation of divinity, beauty, and sublimity.
The artist notes that Christian culture has invested the image of the female body with a narrative of pornographic tension, while at the same time presenting paradise before the Fall as a sexual paradise, the Garden of earthly pleasures. For the artist, sexual paradise is a safe environment, complete trust, acceptance, the opportunity to open up and discover the Other, the opportunity to learn to be loved and to love.
Love is an environment where merging does not dissolve in another person, but on the contrary, strengthens the individuality of each and enriches each other.
Thus, the artist reminds that the division into the sublime and the low in love is artificial, and overcoming this division can make life more beautiful. The heroes of her paintings are immersed in the enigmatic space of love, and sometimes there are ironic scenes that balance the degree of sublimity.

Materials used:

Acrylic

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