"What Happened with this Lovely Girl?" at Draakoni gallery, Tallinn, Estonia, 10.07-05.08.2023
My interest in memory and remembering arises again and again, thus I think it cannot be coincidental. It must be something essentially important for it to disappear for a while, but then always surface again.
In November 2022, I showed a series of paintings bearing the same name in the exhibition Is there Hope For Lovely Creatures?, held in the Lasnamäe Pavilion of Tallinn Art Hall. Tamara Luuk, the curator of the exhibition, has written about the works: “Reviving memories in order to banish them has often been the motivation behind distinctive works of figuration. As time passes, Maria is growing more and more skillful in manipulating what has been stowed away in her memory. She adds, cuts, accentuates and disperses, resulting in paintings of fragmentary mosaiques and drawings of wildly branching fables. Often, only the title references back to the initial impulse, the work itself tries to break this bond, and to move on to another scale. It is peculiar how memories come around a long time later, in a happy, balanced period of life. And it is peculiar how the will of self-expression can spread over such wide landscapes."
In the works shown in the Lasnamäe Pavilion I tried to awaken and revisit my most vivid childhood memories. This time I have taken a slightly different path to understand how the environment in which I grew up influenced my coming of age and my personality. I tried to recreate a kind of universal yet personal and predominantly feminine figurative language. And - how many times already! - I notice with a surprise that none of the images emerge from the others, and that the exhibition as a whole carries contradictions that are still looking for a resolution.”
My interest in memory and remembering arises again and again, thus I think it cannot be coincidental. It must be something essentially important for it to disappear for a while, but then always surface again.
In November 2022, I showed a series of paintings bearing the same name in the exhibition Is there Hope For Lovely Creatures?, held in the Lasnamäe Pavilion of Tallinn Art Hall. Tamara Luuk, the curator of the exhibition, has written about the works: “Reviving memories in order to banish them has often been the motivation behind distinctive works of figuration. As time passes, Maria is growing more and more skillful in manipulating what has been stowed away in her memory. She adds, cuts, accentuates and disperses, resulting in paintings of fragmentary mosaiques and drawings of wildly branching fables. Often, only the title references back to the initial impulse, the work itself tries to break this bond, and to move on to another scale. It is peculiar how memories come around a long time later, in a happy, balanced period of life. And it is peculiar how the will of self-expression can spread over such wide landscapes."
In the works shown in the Lasnamäe Pavilion I tried to awaken and revisit my most vivid childhood memories. This time I have taken a slightly different path to understand how the environment in which I grew up influenced my coming of age and my personality. I tried to recreate a kind of universal yet personal and predominantly feminine figurative language. And - how many times already! - I notice with a surprise that none of the images emerge from the others, and that the exhibition as a whole carries contradictions that are still looking for a resolution.”
"What Happened with this Lovely Girl?" at Draakoni gallery, Tallinn, Estonia, 10.07-05.08.2023, photos Anu Vahtra