New avatar of a person that I personally don’t know

New avatar of a person that I personally don’t know
Vitaly Yankovy

giclee print
31 x 22 cm
Edition of 20

Part of the series “Reflections of a Cold Sun”,  “New avatar of a person that I personally don’t know”, shifts toward a more outward-facing construction of identity. The figure appears armored yet exposed, bound to a totemic hybrid structure reminiscent of medieval forms and digital avatars. Ornamental horns and stylized limbs evoke ancient protective garb, while emoji-like faces – suspended in crimson outlines – hover around the figure like comment bubbles or emotional residue. This is a person reconstructed through the lens of internet representation – costumed, flattened, interpreted.

Across both images, there’s a poignant tension between protection and exposure, intimacy and detachment. The bodies wear history like a filter, drawing on medieval symbolism and digital iconography to communicate the surreal, sometimes lonely search for selfhood in unstable realities. These are not portraits of individuals, but of states – emotional, psychological, and virtual.

Reflections of a Cold Sun is an elegy to a generation navigating identity through layers of artifice, history, and digital mediation – haunted by the self, and by others we’ve never met.