Broken Lullabies
2026
Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX
May 16 to June 14, 2026
Artist Talk: June 4, 6 PM

Broken Lullabies is a multidisciplinary body of work that brings together paintings on paper, animation, sculpture, installation, and interactive music boxes to explore memory, childhood, female identity, trauma, and transformation. Populated by hybrid figures that are part human, part animal, part plant, and part object, the work moves between humor and discomfort, fantasy and psychological reality. Watchful flowers, grackles, fragmented bodies, doll parts, vegetables, and mechanical sculptures create dreamlike environments shaped by the emotional logic of memory and the inner child.

Much of the work is rooted in the idea that memory is carried and stored within the body. Eyes placed on breasts, mouths on stomachs, and faces displaced onto the body suggest that identity, vulnerability, trauma, and emotional experience exist throughout the body rather than only in the mind. Rather than illustrating literal narratives, the works function as emotional and psychological states, using surreal and absurd imagery to approach experiences that are often difficult to articulate directly.

Influenced by Russian and Eastern European folklore, where nature and objects are imagined as emotionally alive, Lanina creates worlds in which bodies, plants, animals, and objects can observe, remember, and communicate. Her process is intuitive and guided by subconscious association, allowing fragmented images and symbolic forms to emerge organically. Through these hybrid and often absurd visual languages, Broken Lullabies examines reconstruction, survival, tenderness, and the complicated ways we attempt to make sense of ourselves and our experiences.

Special thanks to Ted Johnson, Greg Wooldridge, Ro2Art gallery and to composers Yevgeniy Sharlat, Nina C. Young, Jose Martinez and Russell Pinkston.