Original artwork description:

ABOUT THE ARTWORK
"She said YES" from the series “Perichoresis”
This work explores the moment of internal consent — an intimate, sacred “yes” whispered not just to another, but to life itself. Rooted in the symbolic tradition of the Annunciation, the image invites reflection on feminine agency and the deep existential questions surrounding motherhood: Is it a gift, a burden, or a sacred path that not every woman is destined to walk?
Within the shimmering stillness of this scene, the artist uses religious iconography to open up a dialogue about womanhood, infertility, and choice. The lily — a classical symbol of purity and divine calling — becomes here a vessel of decision, rather than submission. This is not a passive acceptance, but a powerful inner affirmation, a reclaiming of destiny on one’s own terms.
The piece is a visual meditation on trust — in the body, in one’s own path, and in the possibility of life even when faced with its absence. It speaks to the transformation of loss into hope, of diagnosis into personal myth. It’s a portrait of the moment just before the miracle, when faith is a choice, not a consequence.

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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