about this work
Ebecho Muslimova is known for her paintings and works on paper of a character she has called Fatebe. She sees Fatebe as her caricatured alter-ego: the bold, shameless, and permanently naked version of herself. Fatebe is notorious for the comedic situations Muslimova depicts her in, her body twisted into impossible, exaggerated poses. Her nudity and the elasticity of her flesh are always in focus, pulling energetically at her breasts with her hands or exposing her genitalia with widely spread legs. Muslimova consistently uses Fatebe to refuse the body’s limitations and, with this, the formal boundaries of artworks.
FATEBE SWUNG shows Fatebe on her hands and knees, swinging a pendulum from her vagina with both shamelessness and precision. The bold black lines and the limited palette of white, sky blue and bright red give the work the punch of a graphic emblem. This clear, high-contrast style connects Muslimova’s approach to Eastern European cartooning and to the exaggerated, irreverent imagery of underground comix, where humor and distortion are used to challenge polite norms. Made in enamel on steel, the work has the glossy authority of a public sign, which makes Fatebe’s outrageous gesture feel both confrontational and strangely official. Her elastic, unapologetic body seems to resist the rigid format meant to contain her, turning the piece into a compact statement of energy, excess and refusal to be controlled.
