HEroic

The series Heroic (“HEroic”) by artist Zhanna Gladko consists of nine self-portraits. Each work copies the images of famous women: artist Frida Kahlo, choreographer Pina Bausch, supermodel Natalia Vodyanova, singer Madonna and actresses Irina Alferova, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Connelly, Marion Cotillard, Keira Knightley. To imitate the artist did not chose her own alter egos with whom she identifies herself, but those heroines with whom her friends and acquaintances compared her with referring to her similarities in outlook and appearance.
In this series, Zhanna Gladko is interested not in the resemblance to the heroines, but in the appropriation of those images that they had tried on themselves: for imitation, the artist chose those photographic and cinematographic images of nine women, where they look courageous, brave, heroic, or imitate stereotypical male codes.

All the images found by the artist are associated with the images of women warriors and valorous heroines (for example, the fashion image of Natalya Vodyanova, who was photographed for the cover of Harper's Bazaar as Jeanne d'Arc).
In modern mass culture, cinema and fashion industry often use such images to show a woman as a person, equal to a man: successful, authoritative, professional, etc. - these qualities are demonstrated through the category of Force/Strength, turning heroines into brave and warlike feminist Amazons.

The series "Heroica (HEroic)" is included in the cycle of works Inciting Force – a project, one of the angles of which is the artistic analysis of gender roles in the modern world, problems of self-identification. The artist has often tried on images borrowed from mass culture, religion, art history and personal family archives. In all the works of the cycle, Zhanna Gladko tries critically to understand the stereotyped roles: what is "masculinity", how it is presented in the information field, where are the boundaries between masculinity and femininity, who has the right to own or demonstrate "power".