PORTRAITS - A solo show of paintings by Elitsa Ristova, born North Macedonia 1991.
As a young woman from North Macedonia, a country once part of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, Elitsa Ristova seeks to reclaim Orientalism from the almost exclusively male artists of the 19th century who travelled to the region in pursuit of titillation. Where the Orientalist painters depicted mainly scantily clad women in submissive postures with eyes averted, Ristova presents herself and her sitters looking the viewer directly in the eye, confident and often challenging, both modern and relevant. Meanwhile, her flat application of colour and stylised features mirror the deliberately non-realist traditions of Byzantine art, where figures are presented devoid of movement, static but with a real emotional heft.