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Artist: Alina Landi (Red Bank, NJ)
NOT FOR SALE. This work is part of the exhibition and is not available for purchase.
Year: 2024 | Medium: canvas, medical gauze, medical tape, masking tape, medicine package, staples, thread, paint | Dimensions: 10.5 x 13.5 x 1 inches | Display: Wall-hung (2D)
Artist Statement
In the summer of 2023, my grandpa needed a new hip. This was the first time I had to face the fact that the man who had almost single-handedly provided for the entire family, working multiple back-breaking jobs in the same day, was slowing down and showing weakness.
What was promised to be a quick and easy procedure that would have him "dancing and running two weeks later" became a 10-month ordeal of doctors' visits, repeated hospitalizations, and ultimately a gaping infected wound that only grew wider.
When his insurance ran out, his stay in rehab was cut short and he moved in with me. Armed with endless antibiotics and medical supplies, I took on the task of treating my grandpa's wound - monitoring, measuring, packing and dressing. Finally, in April 2024, after months of blood and pus, having used up yards of gauze and accumulated piles of medical waste, the wound I thought would only keep expanding and eventually swallow me whole, closed for the first time since the surgery.
I used the leftover supplies to close this chapter of my life by creating this collage.
From the screams and pleas for help echoing in my head to the bloodied, yellow gore, organized neatly with medicine packets and gauze and tape - this collage represents the many months spent feeling hopeless and angry, resentful of a system that was disinterested in helping me or my grandpa.
About the Artist
Alina's family escaped Belarus for Brooklyn, New York following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her family did not have the means to purchase more than the necessities, so she learned to use any materials she could get her hands on - shoeboxes, circulars, hand-me-down art supplies. Alina took to experimenting with collage and mixed-media art to express her feelings in a home where feelings couldn't be vocalized.
Her work incorporates classical Soviet techniques for building meaning out of the juxtaposition of images, but is uniquely hers. It reflects an insatiable yearning to take sociopolitical angst and generational trauma and sort them into neat piles so that they can be processed and stored away. Her work is just as much about scavenging and hoarding unique pieces as it is organizing those pieces into layered and complex images that speak to themes of resilience in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.
instagram.com/enticinglytrashy
Pulp Stiction: Collage as an Act of Resistance. Hopkins Hall Gallery, OSU, Oct 26 to Dec 11, 2026.
Artist: Alina Landi (Red Bank, NJ)
NOT FOR SALE. This work is part of the exhibition and is not available for purchase.
Year: 2024 | Medium: canvas, medical gauze, medical tape, masking tape, medicine package, staples, thread, paint | Dimensions: 10.5 x 13.5 x 1 inches | Display: Wall-hung (2D)
Artist Statement
In the summer of 2023, my grandpa needed a new hip. This was the first time I had to face the fact that the man who had almost single-handedly provided for the entire family, working multiple back-breaking jobs in the same day, was slowing down and showing weakness.
What was promised to be a quick and easy procedure that would have him "dancing and running two weeks later" became a 10-month ordeal of doctors' visits, repeated hospitalizations, and ultimately a gaping infected wound that only grew wider.
When his insurance ran out, his stay in rehab was cut short and he moved in with me. Armed with endless antibiotics and medical supplies, I took on the task of treating my grandpa's wound - monitoring, measuring, packing and dressing. Finally, in April 2024, after months of blood and pus, having used up yards of gauze and accumulated piles of medical waste, the wound I thought would only keep expanding and eventually swallow me whole, closed for the first time since the surgery.
I used the leftover supplies to close this chapter of my life by creating this collage.
From the screams and pleas for help echoing in my head to the bloodied, yellow gore, organized neatly with medicine packets and gauze and tape - this collage represents the many months spent feeling hopeless and angry, resentful of a system that was disinterested in helping me or my grandpa.
About the Artist
Alina's family escaped Belarus for Brooklyn, New York following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her family did not have the means to purchase more than the necessities, so she learned to use any materials she could get her hands on - shoeboxes, circulars, hand-me-down art supplies. Alina took to experimenting with collage and mixed-media art to express her feelings in a home where feelings couldn't be vocalized.
Her work incorporates classical Soviet techniques for building meaning out of the juxtaposition of images, but is uniquely hers. It reflects an insatiable yearning to take sociopolitical angst and generational trauma and sort them into neat piles so that they can be processed and stored away. Her work is just as much about scavenging and hoarding unique pieces as it is organizing those pieces into layered and complex images that speak to themes of resilience in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.
instagram.com/enticinglytrashy
Pulp Stiction: Collage as an Act of Resistance. Hopkins Hall Gallery, OSU, Oct 26 to Dec 11, 2026.