More Human Than Human

A transhumanism oil painting series.

More Human than Human is a science-fiction art series exploring the relationship between medicine, technology, & human body and the artist’s experience with disabilities using a classical art style.

More Human Than Human

This science-fiction art series of oil paintings started in 2017 exploring the impact of robotics on medicine, disability, and our perception of the human body through figurative art. The overall theme is transhumanism and existing as cyborgs. The end goal is to create 10-12 paintings for an exhibition.

The Oil Paintings

Heavy Shoulders in Sunset Painting

Heavy Shoulders in Sunset

30″ x 40″ x 1″ oil painting on white canvas, painted in 2017.

A muscular woman stretches her tired back that’s been weighed down by her heavy, metallic arms all day in the warm light of sunset on the edge of her bed. The arms are both a superpower and a burden. The strength and mobility they grant is matched by the strength and endurance needed just to use them day to day.

Lamentation of Gaia

36″ x 24″ x 1″ oil on white canvas, painted in 2018.

Making use of classical composition and poses from Renaissance portraits and biblical art of pieta, this original oil painting combines lighting from American Western art to create a post-apocalyptic atmosphere in a junkyard with god-like figures. The figures are the duality of life and death, human mortality and superhuman power, as well as renewal and decay. With technology and medicine, this is the tumultuous relationship we are forging with our bodies.

sci-fi art more human than human oil series lamentation of gaia oil painting
make it work oil painting of greek statue with robot arms

Make It Work

30″ x 36″ x 1″ oil on white canvas, painted in 2019.

Over the course of human history, the male body has been measured by its utility, strength, and endurance. How far can we push this idealistic physical utility through reparative surgery before it is asking too much of the human body?

Exhibited in The Body Electric in Ottawa & Toronto, ON – 2019

Cyborg and Drape

18″ x 12″ x 1/2″ oil on white canvas, painted in 2023.

Based on a figure drawing, a female model is transformed into a cyborg leaning against a drape hanging in front of an expansive glass window covered in rain and mist. She offers her body to the viewer, harshly altered by metallic forms. The softness of flesh against metal alludes to the transformations we already make with plastic surgery to correct and “perfect” the female body.

More Human Than Human by Karolina Szablewska

Artist Statement

It was only a few decades ago that a partial impairment of eye sight was seen a major disability to be corrected with a medical apparatus rather than an everyday problem we treat with stylish eyewear. Eyeglasses have changed so much they are no longer a medical device, but a trendy and sophisticated accessory that expresses personality. The journey of eye glasses can serve as an example for the potential of other types of prosthetic devices, such as those for amputees. Combined with rapid advancement in robotics, prostheses are already heading in this direction and posing complicated questions.

If prostheses can become commonplace and become another avenue of individual expression, how does this change our perception of our bodies and our abilities? What happens if these types of prostheses become a fashion statement and are used even when not absolutely necessary? How normal will it be to alter the body? How will they affect what we perceive as athletic achievement? What additional abilities can they grant? Most importantly, how does a shift from human to cyborg affect our perception of humanity, illness and life?

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