Maria Lapteva Sidljarevitš’s paintings depict different styles, emotions, and ways of thinking related to the image of a girl. In her works, you can find both happy and vivid notes as well as melancholic and deep ones, conveying different aspects of being a girl. A girl can be both good and bad, loving and manipulative, strong and vulnerable at the same time.
A good girl and a bad girl in one person is also a cultural image that reflects the complex and multifaceted nature of a human being and reflects the contradictions that one can contain in oneself.
The artist has been deeply influenced by the female characters of the TV series “Game of Thrones”, whose development during the series is complex and ambiguous, turning them from positive to negative in the eyes of viewers, or vice versa. Queen Cersei Lannister, for example, is one of the series’ first anti-heroes – a loving and caring mother and sister who is at the same time a manipulative and brutal ruler. Sansa Stark, who at the beginning of the series seems like a naive and gentle soul, becomes more and more confident and manipulative as the series progresses. When observing such developments, the use of criteria such as “good” and “bad” turns out to be very problematic. It is not possible to judge, everything is relative and subjective.
Looking at this idea in a broader way, one can come to feel the duality of all life – life inevitably involves opposite phenomena, good and bad, life and death, love and hate, happiness and sadness, joy and pain. The concept of the duality of life is also related to the contradictory and opposing values and norms prevalent in society. They can cause uncertainty and ambivalence in people’s thoughts and feelings and influence their behaviour.
