Bergen, Norway / Kyiv, Ukraine
Bergen, Norway / Kyiv, Ukraine
Watercolor paintings on the paper for architectural sketches from the Soviet period. The series was launched on the old ship «Lofoten» from Bergen, Norway and finished in Kyiv.
«Swimming in Freedom» is a series of paintings with an image of female, male, queer, trance and any other bodies, which are artist's reasoning about state of the body, freedom, and definition of physicality in contemporary society. The series also became the artistic way of Maria Kulikovska to understand herself as «others».
In the series «Swimming in Freedom» Kulikovska represents men's bodies that have not appeared in her paintings before. «It is again me or a woman with a mark, transformed into her husband», — explains the artist. Maria Kulikovska tries to record the state of various transformed bodies through the mutating forms of bright-defenseless colors. The male body in the series of watercolors «Swimming in Freedom» is a peculiar experience of the artist over the established society psycho-artistic roles of the man and the woman.
Also, one of the frequent issues that the artist reflects upon her artworks is the traditional role of women in art, which often are pushed aside onto the margin by patriarchal society. «My artworks always have a political aspect. Because I am a woman and I create women: in dance, in flight, lying, broken, damaged. All my works are signs of either past or future struggle», — explains Maria Kulikovska.