Drawing on her collection of Russian produced objects from the communist era, Kate Barba borrows signs and symbols for her paintings on canvas or wooden carriers. From birth to death, the people under Soviet rule were constantly reminded of their situation through the use of aesthetically specific decorations with a strong ideological and political content that were simply reproduced on every available surface. The artist is fascinated by this single minded recurrence and its conservative aesthetic that changed very little over time, destined instead to be easily recognized and comprehended. She singles out certain elements such as stamps, calligraphically rendered words, and communist symbols, isolates them, and neutralizes them through careful positioning within the frame. She focuses on their decorative and aesthetic qualities instead. The colors are kept straightforward, communist red, bright yellow, and white, so as to keep the image clear and free, while the shapes of the carriers are mostly round and oval, to further soften the reference to their heavy handed origin.
In earlier work, Kate Barba had stripped single frames borrowed from comics from their text and context, similarly focusing on their decorative value but also strength as autonomous pictures.