Girls Talk (a Lot)

Marija Aničić, from 13th to 24th October 2021.

The woman that Marija Aničić depicts and presents to us, seriously but humorously, is a living individual in contemporary society. She is not an abstract model to be criticized or analyzed, that is, rejected or adopted. At the same time general and particular, she is a reflection on the real woman in our time and her speech and voice.

The characters of women and girls, placed on the abstract whiteness of paper, without spatial context, are divided into two groups: women in spontaneous movements – as in a film or in fragments of memory – and girls in static poses – as in front of a photographic camera. This division suggests two aspects of reality – as lived experience and as a conventional social model, that is, the individuality of a concrete woman versus the universality of the female social position in which female psychology and a woman’s view of the world develop. The contrast between living experience and model convention is further emphasized by color, where living experience is treated mainly with red and pink tones of soft airy watercolor, standing in clear contrast to gray achromatic values of much harder graphite pencil drawing. By lacking portrait-like treatment, which contrasts with the naturalism of movements and poses, a balance is established between erasing and preserving the individual features of the characters, further emphasizing the relationships between the individual and the universal within the theme. Motifs of cigarettes, comic-like speech bubbles, balloons, or guns indicate the emotional and intellectual states of the characters – defiance in cigarettes, confusion and insecurity in bubbles, or fear and aggression in guns. They also bring references to film, comics, pop art, popular culture, and everyday life in general, and with their subtle historicist echo, establish a delicate distance from the banality of the moment.

Through a series of drawings and watercolors, Girls Talk (a Lot), Marija Aničić deals with themes of the female perspective on the world and the place of women in contemporary society. By focusing on the relationship of the individual woman to femininity and society, the artist distances herself from political feminism and reflects on the question of women from an experiential and psychological standpoint.

Marija Aničić graduated in both undergraduate and master studies at the Department of Mural Painting, Faculty of Applied Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade. Professionally, she works in photography, drawing, and painting. She is a member of ULUPUDS. She has exhibited in several group exhibitions. This is her third solo exhibition.