Tiha Toleva 

There is a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the male fantasy of what female body is. Female body supposed to be perfect as the cover of a magazine. But is there such a thing in real life?! What is perfection? We are given our bodies and we cannot choose different. Life is constantly changing the human body, shaping it as the nature creates diversity of landscapes.

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In these series I work with the human body and particularly with breaking the idea, that old stereotype of the perfect female body.  I'm using my own body as a model because it's always there for me. This makes each work very personal, very exposing. I am telling my own story and my own experience with it. I'm not afraid of showing myself to the audience and I seek awareness for the beauty of the body as it is unique by itself. The body parts are presented in a different angle as part of a landscape. The works are enlarged, cropped and zoomed-in body parts, painted in bright, not flesh colors. The paintings are some sort of abstractions with reference to landscapes. I aim to let the viewer wonder what it is, to let him/her feel uncomfortable when realizing it and yet to keep his/her focus on the painting as such. I'm mixing figuration and abstraction in a way that makes us question what body is. Looking through different perspectives the body could be overseen as a landscape. 

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We all deal with body issues, and more than ever, today, with all the cosmetic surgeries and cosmetics to change how we look, and the constant barrage of images of beautiful, gorgeous, plastic-looking people. There’s always been so much shame attached to the body. And that affects men, too. It’s not just women.

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It is also about acceptance of mortality. It’s about being a body that changes, that ages, that loves, that hates, that does all of these things! It’s not about being some sort of a model, a perfect ideal of any kind. It is about being different, it is about being yourself, just the way you are. The beauty is in individuality.

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