The Human as a Super-NPC
In Oksana Bochina's photographic style, the human is inextricably linked to the urban environment. This urban setting is both a habitat and a backdrop, a battlefield, a stage, a showcase, and everything listed above simultaneously. Bochina, who lives and works in Montenegro, perceives the human being as an element of a more complex system; however, this human does not reduce to the system or their function within it. Bochina's human is simultaneously a guest, an outsider, and a native inhabitant of the circumstances presented by the photographer. Her anthropological exploration is a captivating and vital optimistic quest for ever-new contradictory and mutually exclusive human identities. The camera, gazing from above, seems to pluck an individual from the urban flow and, together with the photographer, initiates an interactive game of multiplying meanings and identities around the captured person. This fascinating aesthetic, which is not merely a banal conceptualist attraction, allows the viewer to train their awareness of their usual perception of urban landscapes. It presents a slightly naive yet superhuman message from an artist wishing to share their benevolent vision as a method with those around them. The photographer employs dizzying photographic perspectives, vibrant dynamic colours, and a nuanced gaze from the observer's standpoint while not becoming a judge of her characters. Her works are rich in detail, inviting prolonged contemplation; although her characters may be presented as NPCs in video games, they transcend this status, offering hope that we (ordinary people) too are more than just images of ourselves.
