EXHIBITION // Maria Lapteva "It's All About the Girls"

Opening on 4 April 2024, "All About the Girls" focuses on the complex and multifaceted nature of the human being, reflecting the contradictions that a person can carry.

Maria Lapteva Sidljarevich`s paintings depict different styles, ways of thinking and emotions associated with the image of the girl. Her works range from joyful and brightly coloured to melancholic and profound, conveying different aspects of being a girl. A girl can be both good and bad, both loving and manipulative, both strong and vulnerable. Looking at this idea in a broader sense, one can come to a sense of the duality of all life - inevitably, life involves opposites, good and bad, life and death, love and hate, happiness and sadness, joy and pain.

According to the artist, she has been deeply influenced by the female characters of the TV series Game of Thrones, whose development over the course of the series has been complex and ambiguous, transforming them from positive to negative in the eyes of the viewers, or vice versa.

"Queen Cersei Lannister, for example, is one of the first anti-heroes in the series - a loving and caring mother and sister is at the same time a manipulative and brutal ruler. Sansa Stark, who at the beginning of the series appears to be a naïve and gentle soul, becomes increasingly assertive and manipulative as the series progresses," Lapteva Sidlyarevich muses, adding: "Following such developments, the use of criteria such as 'good' and 'bad' becomes very problematic. There is no way to judge, everything is relative and subjective."

Maria Lapteva Sidljarevich (born 1982) graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts with a Master's degree in painting in 2014. She has had several solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions.

Lapteva Sidljarevich has attracted widespread attention, including thanks to the popular platform ZA/UM, where writer Mudlum characterises him thus: "As a painter, Maria is a kind of peculiar blend of naivism and expressionism, but in constant evolution. I believe there is also a strong background in Russian conceptualism of the 1920s /.../ In her paintings she tries to resolve the main issues of our lives, the infinite sub-themes of life, death, love and suffering. Who are you in this world? Where is your place, what do you have to do, where do you have to go, who do you have to become or stay? Where is God? What is loneliness? No false pride in the big issues, no social art. He speaks to his painting, touches it, and sometimes it feels as if it is not he who is painting the painting, but the painting is painting him and himself, changing, growing out of himself."

Maria Lapteva Sidljarevich's exhibition "Kõik tüdrukutest / It's All About the Girls" opens on 4 April and will remain open until 5 May 2024. HAKI Gallery, located in Tartu, Aparaaditehas, is open Tue-Fri 12-18 and Sat 12-16.

More information:
Raul Oreškin
HAKI Gallery
Haki Gallery, Kastani 42, Tartu, Estonia
Tel: +372 5884 4909