Original artwork description:

After Faith is a large-scale abstract painting by Gela Mikava that explores the residue of belief—what remains when conviction, ideology, or inherited truths dissolve.

Built through layered gestures, erosion, and vertical drips, the surface functions as an emotional archive. The dominant red field carries psychological and historical weight, evoking trauma, sacrifice, and collective memory, while pale washes and scraped passages introduce moments of silence and suspension.

Fragments of text embedded within the surface do not operate as declarations but as remnants—partially erased and absorbed into the painterly body. Language appears unstable and wounded, mirroring the fragility of belief itself.

From a distance, the work reads as a monumental, almost architectural presence; up close, it reveals intimacy, vulnerability, and traces of process. After Faith inhabits the space after certainty, where meaning must be reconstructed from fragments, memory, and silence.

Materials used:

acrylic,ink, paper, oil, textile on cotton canvas

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