Mariya Zherdeva

The process of making derives from the void, from anxiety about something that has always been lost, a blank, a missing piece. More specifically, it comes from the absence that is rooted within the territories of female depression and sexuality.

Each piece takes inspiration from female fictional icons that are present in Greek mythologies, folklore, music and literature, such as Persephone, Flora, Eve and Ophelia. The physical making of a painting begins with picking elements from these stories, which usually describe the consumption of fruit or flowers, seen as signifiers of sexuality striving to capture the sublime and overcome mortality, which is inevitably intertwined with realisation of failure to do so; this metaphorical thinking is also a reflection on making the painting-object. Symbolic fragments imbedded within the layers of paint tell a story, a contemporary mythology, about our excessive way of living, of excessive consuming, which is essentially a drug that is employed to numb the boredom integral to humanity.

The final outcomes strive to be the folklore of our time, with gods of sex, alcohol and consumerism; not as criticism but rather as a quiet glorifying of the banalities of life and common knowledge of the inevitable end.