Painting by Kateryna Kopeikina

Structure of Power is a series of works exploring the mechanisms of power and different forms of domination that exist both in human society and in nature. Through grotesque figures, animals, workers, and political characters, I explore a recurring structure: someone occupies the top, someone sustains the system, and someone becomes its foundation — often without the possibility or ambition to claim power themselves. I am interested not in a particular political system, but in the recurring patterns of hierarchy itself: ambition, submission, force, propaganda, exploitation, institutional power, and the dependence of one individual on another. Within this structure, each character performs a particular function — from the police officer and the worker to the military figure, the political spokesperson, or the person who literally becomes a support for those above them. The series deliberately uses absurdity, and grotesque imagery. Humour becomes both a way of coping with violence and a part of the system itself: even in a vulnerable position, people can turn their own trauma into jokes or entertainment in order to make reality more bearable. These works do not attempt to create an accurate model of society. Instead, they isolate several rough and recurring patterns through which power is distributed, maintained, and reproduced — from human institutions to the almost instinctive hierarchies of the animal world. At its core, the series is about how hierarchy reproduces itself through different bodies, roles, and systems, where each level can simultaneously be subordinate to someone above and dominant over someone below.