Painting series "79.6%", 2026

Õli vineeril

With these paintings I wish to symbolically equalize the ratio of female and male nude paintings. In my thesis research I found that in the combined collections of 4 of the biggest Estonian museums 79.6% of nude paintings depict women and 20.4% men. Because of this, I painted 79.6 nude paintings of men. Putting such an unusual amount of male nudes in one place I hope to bring out the absurdity of the existing ratio. All poses are inspired by female nude paintings in the 4 researched museums. The colors refer to flipped gender norms. With this painting series I hope to invoke questions like why have gender roles evolved to be like this and is everything that we deem normal always good?