Jolanta Kyzikaite (b. 1980) studied painting at the Vilnius Academy of Art, and currently is a doctoral student at the same academy. She is the winner of the second (2009) and first (2010) awards at the competition “Young Painter Prize”. She participated in more than ten group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad, and since 2010 held several solo exhibitions in Lithuania. An active participant of artist-in-residence programmes, she is a member of the Lithuanian Artists’ Union since 2011. In 2013 Kyzikaite received a state grant.
The leading motif of Kyzikaite’s work is childhood. It is not merely a happy period of carefree games. As you look at the depicted scenes, you are struck with a premonition of disaster, a real or apparent threat. The artist emphasises the transience and vulnerability of childhood accompanied by anxiety and fears. The artist often converts a figure of a child into a metaphor of a human being in general, and through this metaphor ponders on the threats of the modern world. Thus, wider urgent topics are intertwined with the childhood plots: emigration, pharmacy, politics and mass media with their frequent companions – aggression and violence. The painter turns to open social criticism and explores the negative influence of fashion and beauty industry, social networks, advertising and toy industry on the growing personality. In her paintings brand logotypes and other symbols of society immersed in constant consumption emerge as a kind of aggressive foreign substances. The pressure to meet the standards is expressed by seeing oneself as if from aside, in a viewfinder of a digital camera or photographs from the social network profile.
Kyzikaite’s work blends the social context with autobiographical details, personal impressions of the represented situations and experiences of motherhood. Her pictures can be viewed as open and personal commentaries, which are undoubtedly suggestive both visually and from the viewpoint of their plots. The narrative is created according to the principle of dramatic contrast, by juxtaposing opposite things and aptly using eloquent details. The compositions of her large-size canvases are reminiscent of comic strips, where the main narrative line is highlighted. The stylistics of the paintings, as well as the combinations of a bright contour of drawing and decorative colour surfaces also seems to be inspired by comic strips or animated cartoons.
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