Personal exhibition “16 ROUND PRINCESSES”, Staapli Gallery, Tallinn, 2021 October

Katrin Valgemäe’s, who is spicing up classical painting techniques with pop art, kitsch and camp, “16 ROUND PRINCESSES” is an illusion of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale “Princess Pea”, with which generations of women have grown up. The fairytale about a promised prince on a white horse and a "whipped cream cake” bridal gown slips into an astonishing potpourri of ironically gazing women who don't seem to know what to do with the upside down fairytale (ie reality). One might think that a new generation of self-conscious 21st-century "girls" imbued with feminism have put a short end to this fairytale, but the screen-sneer of the selfie era proves the exact opposite. Is the hypnotised self-perspective of contemporary exaggerated self-centredness a zombie like metamorphosis of a broken promise?