Toulouse. Margarita pays tribute to the women of Donbass
It is an exhibition at the heart of current events offered in Toulouse, until February 4, by Margarita Mladenova. The Ukrainian painter has lived in France since 2014, after fleeing the conflict in Donbass with her husband and daughters. Beautifully titled, “My Beloved Women of Donbass”, Margarita’s paintings unfurl a gallery of female portraits in tribute to her friends, family and loved ones. “These women are dear to me, she explains. They all have difficult destinies and lifestyles. never. They have all lost their homes, their jobs, their country and are sometimes far from their families. This exhibition is a tribute that I wanted to pay to their courage, their resilience”.
If Margarita did not follow the courses of Fine Arts nor those of a school of drawing but studies of psychology, she always liked the drawing and the creation. Moreover, for ten years, she was a stylist, successfully selling the clothes she designed. Settled in Toulouse five years ago, she became a self-taught painter. “With this conflict, lives took another direction. For my part, I needed to express my emotions. Painting is an ideal medium that helps me a lot to overcome this drama”. On the walls of this gallery, there are portraits with the first name of each of these women: “There is Aliesia, my youngest daughter, Natasha, my ex-sister-in-law, Yana, my niece. And then my mother Madejda and Alla , my mother-in-law, etc. All these women are trying to be well, to rebuild themselves and to stay positive”. At the center of this exhibition, two large-format paintings: “The first represents the Ukrainian poet Lesya Ukrainka, symbol of my homeland and her aspiration for freedom. The second shows Catherine Deneuve, icon of France, a free country which stretched out his hand. And which is now my second home”.
SG