Viktoryia Shydlouskaya Dijk (b. 1992, Minsk, Belarus) is a painter based in Rotterdam. Her large figurative paintings show the human body under psychological pressure, as it compresses, deforms and dissolves. The figure serves as a site where an inner state becomes physically present. Dijk makes her own paint from dry pigment and rabbit skin glue and works on unprimed linen. She moves the canvas between horizontal and vertical positions to control how the paint flows and pools. Instead of line or contour, her images are built from overlapping planes of vibrant color, so the mass of the material and the scale of the canvas carry the subject. She works in series, where each body of work takes up a different state and the paintings answer one another.