5-Minute Bedtime Stories

(Hardback)

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Twelve fairy tales by Maria Gvardeitseva based on the real stories of her friends

For centuries, the breakup has been the prerogative of men. Today, about half of all marriages in Europe end in divorce and, significantly, 75 percent of divorce applications are filed by women. Perhaps that last statistic explains why women suffer more emotional hurt and find it harder than their ex-partners to build a new lifestyle and relationships. The cruel logic would be that if the woman marries for love and then decides it was a bad idea, the fault must be hers. So she suffers psychological and social consequences - self-blame, stigma, or both. The project 5-Minute Bedtime Stories resists this logic in a fabulous way. London-based artist Maria Gvardeitseva, divorced after 20 years of marriage, four children, numerous countries, and shared challenges, takes a pronounced political and feminist approach to the story of her separation, which transforms grief, sorrow, and hatred in order to let them go. She offers artistic tools celebrating "divorce art" that help women to look at the situation with self-love, rediscover the socio-political aspects of marriage, and cope with this life trauma and the challenges of patriarchy. She does this in a surprising way - by reference to fairy tales.

Author Bio

Maria Gvardeitseva is a multi-disciplinary visual artist based in London. In her works, she works ironically with themes of memory and sublimates pain in ways that are at once realistic and fantastical. The political plays a key role in her installations. Gvardeitseva has taken part in group and solo exhibitions, staged performances and was a finalist in the national selection to create the exhibition for the Belarusian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.