Adelina Sasnauskaite

My Wedding Day

Jackson's Painting Prize 2023
Acrylic
Canvas
110 x 120 cm

“Having grown up in a Post-Soviet country and experiencing the grim realities of poor economics and lack of opportunities, Adelina, just like most girls, has always felt that the desire for Western beauty and upkeep standards seemingly painted the illusion of a better life. The Westernised female beauty standard is so strong and aspired across the globe yet so limiting and so damaging for different expressions of ‘femininity’. Using cues and motives from both Western and Soviet worlds Adelina wishes to scrutinise the complex relationship of women to their society; navigating everyday sexism, pressures surrounding appearance and behaviour; and of course the sense of enforced femininity. Adelina’s paintings function as navigation of a world operating like a theatre stage, in which her models enact themselves rather than maintaining their personal truths. Each piece reflects on a forced state of being, whether it’s through hyper-femininity as standardised and perpetuated by the modern media or the constant feeling of being watched and judged.”