Demolished dreams: Painting inspired by living in the Post-Soviet country

Hello again everyone. I am Maria, 19, and come from Georgia. By living in a Post-Soviet Country situated at the crossroad where Europe meets Asia, I have spent a large portion of my life in the arena of conflicting interests, corruption and changing mentalities. Georgia, which is in the active process of redefining itself and struggles with a disintegrated value system, is where I come from. Devastation and sheer emptiness is what being part of Soviet Union have brought to my country. Even though I was not born during this regime I experience the leftovers of Soviet past in my daily routine. I always had a passion for creating artworks but initially, NCN Art Department strongly supported my enthusiasm and my interest have increased as I have become more focused on a political dimension. I have spent a large portion of my life in the arena of conflicting interests, corruption, and changing mentalities, in this ongoing conflict of ideologies which contains an aspect of our lives at a certain stage, no matter what ethnicity we represent. In my A Level Art and Design Project, that I did last year, as a part of an installation that included five other paintings and a short projections, I tried to focus on the concept of demolished dreams, that people try to pursue even in the face of oppression. During the first years of living abroad the taste of alternative culture and the opportunities have reinforced my passion for utilizing art as a vehicle towards making a difference.

“you can’t just say that the system is flawed; you have to work through the system and show it in all of its detail; that’s the only way you can ultimately make a critique.” These very words by Ai Weiwei were an initial stimulus for my investigation.

As an upcoming artist, I stand by my belief that you have to use your own experience to tell a story. As with my homeland Georgia it is impossible to distinguish art and politics. I believe that it is through my art that my advocacy for my rights and the protests against contemporary actions will persist, as the art always wins, anything can happen to me or to anyone but art will stay.

Unfortunately, for this painting, all the progress pictures are lost, as I didn't import them to my computer and now can't see to find them anywhere, but did find the pictures of my process and experimentation on my portrait that I drew initial inspiration from. I do have progress pictures for all the other paintings and also a lot to say about political art and artists that inspire me in this genre as well, so if you'd be interested in any of this, please let me know in the comments, as I'm new here and don't know what the general interests are on Steemit.

This is the picture I started working with, as I wanted an image of devastated girl and didn't really have luxury of caucasian models in the UK posing for me so i just took some selfies in an art studio and started experimenting in 5 minutes. That's where i learned, that if you don't have initial inspiration, can always take photos of things or yourself and start experimenting around the pictures.

These are just parts of my sketchbook:

This is the final work, hope you enjoyed it! Please leave all the feedback and questions in the comments !

Maria.