Anna Bila - Holding Still - XL

Anna Bila — Holding Still — XL

2026
110 × 110 cm
Ink and pigments on lightly primed cotton canvas
Living Stones series

Holding Still belongs to Anna Bila’s ongoing Living Stones series.

Three horizontal organic forms are arranged one above another, touching at narrow points and creating a structure that appears simultaneously stable and fragile. Each form retains its own density and movement of colour, shifting between translucent pink, violet and deep purple.

The composition is built around balance and contact. The forms appear to support one another, yet their connection remains minimal — almost temporary. This tension between weight and lightness, stability and possible movement gives the work its quiet sense of suspension.

The shapes remain deliberately ambiguous. They may suggest stones, fragments of bodies or unfamiliar organic structures without fully becoming any of them. This uncertainty is central to the Living Stones series, which explores the boundary between living and non-living matter and the idea that even seemingly stable forms are continuously changing.

The canvas is lightly prepared with diluted primer, allowing the surface to remain absorbent. Bila works with water, inks and pigments, often placing the canvas on the floor and changing its position while working. Gravity, absorption and the movement of liquid become part of the image-making process.

The artist intervenes continuously — directing the flow, removing pigment, adding layers and responding to unexpected changes in the material. This balance between intention and unpredictability is central to her practice.

About the artist

Anna Bila is a Ukrainian visual artist currently living and working in Turin, Italy.

The continuous process of becoming lies at the core of her artistic practice. She is interested in transitional states, when a person, an image, or a form exists between two conditions — no longer what it once was, but not yet something new.

For the artist, nothing in the world is ever truly complete. Living and non-living nature alike are in a constant state of transformation, whether those changes unfold within seconds or over much longer periods of time.

Selected exhibitions

2025 — “JUICY JUNE”
Group exhibition, Marktgalerie, Düsseldorf, Germany

2022 — “DESENSITISATION”
Solo exhibition, Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa, Ukraine

2022 — “SENSING PLACES, PLACING SENSE”
Group exhibition, ODP Galerie, Leipzig, Germany

2022 — “ODESA REFLECTIONS”
Group exhibition, GOLAB, Milan, Italy

Official website: annabila.art

The artwork is an original, unique work, signed by the artist and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.

The painting will be carefully shipped rolled in a protective tube, without a stretcher, for safe international transportation.

Free shipping within the EU.