Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. While you were discussing the supposed death of figurative painting at your social openings, an artist of Macedonian origin living in London was quietly leading her own visual insurrection. Elitsa Ristova, born in 1991, produces portraits of women who do not look at you, who challenge you. And this gaze, precisely, is the whole difference between an image and a manifesto.
The Byzantine heritage as a language of resistance
Ristova does not come from nowhere. Her work is rooted in the artistic history of North Macedonia, a land marked by centuries of Byzantine and Ottoman rule. This lineage is not anecdotal. Byzantine art, with its hieratic frontality and rejection of naturalism, constitutes the conceptual foundation on which she builds her own practice [1]. Whereas classical Greco-Roman art sought to faithfully reproduce reality, Byzantine aesthetics favored a symbolic approach, spiritual representation rather than physical imitation.
This distinction is central to understanding Ristova’s work. In her canvases, female figures stand out against monochrome backgrounds, their oil-painted bodies offering a smooth texture that inexorably guides the eye towards their faces. This composition directly recalls Byzantine icons where saints and Christ appeared frontally, suspended in a timeless golden space, detached from any earthly contingency. Byzantine figures did not reside in a specific place or time but existed in a higher sphere, transcending the material world [1].
Ristova borrows this formal strategy but radically reverses its function. Whereas the Byzantine icon invited mystical contemplation and communication with the divine, her portraits demand a direct confrontation with contemporary female subjectivity. The young women she paints fix you with an intensity that categorically refuses to be consumed by the gaze. Their solemn expressions, their closed body language constitute as many barriers erected against objectification. This frontality, inherited from Byzantium, becomes for her a political tool of resistance against the male gaze.
Ristova’s use of unified and vibrant backgrounds also evokes the Byzantine color palette where each color bore a precise symbolic meaning. Gold represented divine light, red sacred life, blue human existence [1]. In Ristova’s work, these monochrome areas no longer serve religious sacredness but sacralize female identity. The deep cerulean of some compositions or the warm hues she favors give her subjects a monumental presence, tearing them from everyday banality to place them in a realm of dignity and authority.
In the “Portraits” exhibition presented at the Korea International Art Fair in 2024, this Byzantine lineage appears with striking clarity. Ristova deliberately explores the stylized forms and flat tones characteristic of Byzantine art, rejecting realism in favor of a more symbolic and emotional expression [2]. This approach is part of a logic of cultural reappropriation. Originating from a territory steeped in Byzantine history, she does not merely cite this heritage, she reactivates it, diverts it, making it an aesthetic weapon in the service of a contemporary feminist cause.
What must be understood is that Ristova does not produce Byzantine pastiches. She performs a bold historical translation. While medieval icons served to materialize the divine presence through a carefully codified resemblance, Ristova’s portraits materialize autonomous female presence, refusing to be reduced to a docile image. The frontality, rigidity of figures, and hieratic quality that characterized Byzantine religious art become in her works the visual markers of a subjectivity that resists, that refuses, that imposes its own terms.
Virginia Woolf and the spatial inscription of the feminine
If Byzantine influence provides Ristova with her formal language, it is in modernist literature, and particularly in Virginia Woolf, that the conceptual equivalent of her approach can be found. Woolf, a central figure of the Bloomsbury Group, dedicated her literary life to deconstructing conventional representations of women, exploring their complex psychology beyond Victorian stereotypes [3]. Her essay “A Room of One’s Own” remains a foundational text of modern feminism, arguing that to create freely, women must have a space of their own, both material and symbolic, free from male domination.
This question of space proves central to reading Ristova’s work. Her portraits precisely create this visual “room of one’s own” that Woolf demanded. The monochrome backgrounds, devoid of any narrative or contextual element, constitute protected spaces where female figures exist for themselves, freed from the need to justify themselves or conform to the viewer’s expectations. In this abstract pictorial space, they are not defined by their relationship to men, children, or domestic work. They simply are, fully.
Woolf wrote that “women stimulate his imagination by their grace and their art of life” [3]. This statement finds a powerful echo in the way Ristova chooses and represents her models. Her portraits are not neutral anatomical studies but celebrations of female agency, of women’s ability to occupy space with confidence. The direct visual contact maintained by her subjects recalls Byzantine frontality, certainly, but also resonates with Woolf’s claim of a female presence that refuses to be marginalized or made invisible.
In “Mrs Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse,” Woolf deployed an innovative narrative technique, stream of consciousness, to penetrate female interiority and reveal its psychological richness. Ristova accomplishes a similar operation visually. By deliberately avoiding trompe-l’oeil effects, she emphasizes that her creations should be perceived as painted interpretations rather than mere imitations of reality. This approach invites viewers to consider the individuals represented with care, respect, and sometimes veneration, while questioning the notion of the female body as an object of visual consumption.
Woolf explored sexual fluidity, female independence, and creativity beyond conventions in her novels[3]. “Orlando”, her boldest novel, features a character who spans centuries while changing sex, radically questioning gender constructions. Ristova, in her contemporary practice, continues this questioning. Her portraits of 21st-century young women from diverse backgrounds depict a multicultural and multifaceted post-pandemic metropolis. This diversity is not cosmetic but political. She asserts that the female experience cannot be reduced to a single model but unfolds in infinite variations.
Woolf’s relationship to visual representation was complex and ambivalent. Raised in a family where portraiture held a central place, photographed by her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron, painted by her sister Vanessa Bell, she intimately knew the power and dangers of the image[3]. She even wrote, “Words are an impure medium… it would have been much better to be born into the silent kingdom of painting”[3]. Ristova resolves this tension between the verbal and the visual in favor of the latter. Her portraits speak without words, communicating directly through color, composition, and gaze.
The essayist critic Adam Szymanski notes that Ristova’s work “is bolder and more serious” than that of some contemporaries, citing her 2023 painting “Sweet Whispers of Time” where two figures intimately intertwine against a cerulean blue background[4]. The fluidity of brushstrokes combined with the graceful positioning of the figures evokes vulnerability and mutual trust. This intimacy between women recalls the relationships Woolf had with Vita Sackville-West, Ottoline Morrell, and others, relationships that nourished her creative imagination and challenged the heteronormative norms of her time.
The Bloomsbury Group, of which Woolf was the central figure, valued sexual equality, intellectual freedom, and open debate[3]. These values shine through in Ristova’s aesthetic choices. By depicting women of color and celebrating diverse morphologies and identity expressions, she perpetuates the spirit of inclusivity and questioning of hierarchies established by the Bloomsbury Group. Her canvases create spaces of freedom where oppressive social norms are suspended, where women can exist on their own terms.
Painting as an act of affirmation
Understanding Ristova requires abandoning conventional expectations of what a female portrait should be. Her practice is part of a long tradition of feminist contestation that runs through 20th-century art but takes a specific form with her, informed by her personal background. From a small town in North Macedonia, encouraged from childhood by her mother to pursue artistic ambitions, she first studied at Goce Delčev University in Štip before moving to London to earn her Master’s degree at the London College of Contemporary Arts.
This geographic and cultural journey imbues her work with a productive tension. Ristova does not paint from the established metropolitan center but from a position of double belonging, between Balkan heritage and the contemporary London scene. This stance allows her to see what others do not, to question what others accept without reflection. Her portraits reveal the diverse and multifaceted nature of a 21st-century post-pandemic metropolis but do so by mobilizing visual strategies from elsewhere, from another time, from another history.
The exhibition “Equanimity of the Mind” that she presented in 2021 at the London College of Contemporary Arts while she was an artist in residence there marked a turning point in her career. The title itself reveals her concerns. Equanimity, this ability to maintain emotional stability in the face of upheavals, becomes an attribute of the figures she paints. Their calm faces, their assured postures embody a quiet strength that refuses to be destabilized by external injunctions. This equanimity is by no means passive. On the contrary, it is an active form of resistance.
In 2024, her participation in the Korea International Art Fair further expanded her audience. Presented by the gallery Waterhouse & Dodd Contemporary, her work meets an Asian public who find unique resonances there. The universality of her approach does not come from leveling differences but rather from her ability to articulate specific concerns, a particular history, a singular aesthetic in a way that creates bridges, opens dialogues.
The economic question cannot be avoided. Ristova’s auction results have consistently exceeded estimates by a factor of ten, with the work Twirls and Twine (2020) sold at Phillips in 2023 for more than 175,000 euros all fees included. This spectacular commercial valuation raises legitimate questions about the commodification of feminist art. How can a practice that claims to be critical of the objectification of female bodies circulate within an art market itself structured by capitalistic and patriarchal logics?
Ristova herself articulates her artistic philosophy in terms that escape the mercantile. In a statement, she asserts that art allows her to undertake “an odyssey, unveiling the inner and outer dimensions of existence, discovering new facets of herself” and provides her “a canvas to freely express her thoughts and emotions” [5]. This conception of art as existential exploration and personal expression fits within a romantic tradition that one might think outdated. But Ristova proves that this stance retains its relevance when combined with acute political awareness.
Her canvases serve as an exploration of contemporary portraiture through a feminist perspective, questioning entrenched norms and amplifying marginalized voices. She seeks to engage audiences in visually and intellectually stimulating encounters that trigger conversations on gender, power, and representation, ultimately advocating for greater inclusivity and equity in the art world and beyond.
This ambition may seem excessive for an artist still early in her career. Yet the critical reception she receives suggests that she touches on something fundamental. Critic Adam Szymanski, writing for MutualArt, places Ristova alongside other important portraitists of her generation like Anna Weyant and Chloe Wise, noting that her work stands out for its boldness and seriousness [4]. This recognition validates an approach that refuses easy answers, that does not seek to seduce but to confront.
What makes Ristova’s work particularly powerful in 2025 is her ability to articulate urgent concerns without falling into didacticism. Her paintings are not illustrated pamphlets. They function primarily as sophisticated aesthetic objects, mastering the codes of the pictorial medium. The warm color palette she deploys, the tactile quality of her painted surfaces, the balanced composition of her canvases testify to accomplished craftsmanship. It is precisely this technical excellence that allows her political message to come across without being reduced to a slogan.
The influence of Byzantine art and the resonance with Virginia Woolf are not mere scholarly references aimed at academically legitimizing her practice. They are active tools, resources mobilized to construct a visual language capable of saying what must be said about contemporary female condition. Byzantium offers the formal model of non-naturalized presence, refusing mimetic illusion. Woolf provides the conceptual framework of female spatial and psychological autonomy. Ristova fuses these legacies to produce something new.
Her portraits do not propose a harmonious or reconciled vision of gender relations. They maintain a productive tension, a distrust that refuses to resolve into easy consolation. The gaze her subjects direct at the viewer does not seek approval, does not solicit empathy. It simply asserts the right to exist fully, without compromise, without excuse. This formal intransigence is the major strength of her work.
The question of whether Ristova will manage to maintain this demand over time remains open. The art market has a formidable ability to digest and neutralize even the most critical practices. The institutional recognition she is beginning to receive, the high prices reached by her works could eventually blunt the edge of her approach. But for now, each new canvas proves that her commitment remains intact.
Elitsa Ristova paints women who owe you nothing. Women who occupy pictorial space with quiet authority, who look at you without blinking, who refuse to play the game of visual seduction. This simple proposition, in a world saturated with female images produced for and by male desire, constitutes a political act of rare radicalism. That this act borrows its forms from 12th-century Byzantine iconography and its spirit from an early 20th-century English novelist in no way diminishes its relevance. On the contrary, it demonstrates that the struggle for female self-determination crosses eras and geographies, mobilizing all available tools to be heard.
Ristova’s painting reminds us that an image is never innocent, that it always conveys power relations, implicit hierarchies, identity assignments. By choosing to depict diverse young women in poses that challenge conventions of female representation, she does not merely produce beautiful objects. She intervenes in the field of visual representations to create a space of resistance, a place where other images become possible, where other ways of seeing and being seen emerge.
It is this ambition that makes her work much more than a mere contribution to the history of contemporary portraiture. Ristova does not seek to perfect a tradition but to turn it against itself, to harness its formal power in the service of a social transformation project. In a context where female images circulate massively on social networks, where women’s bodies remain subject to constant surveillance and objectification, her paintings offer a precious counter-model. They show that another visual economy remains possible, where women are no longer objects of the gaze but viewing subjects, where they define the terms of their own representation.
So this is what is at stake in these seemingly simple paintings. Behind the smooth and colorful surface, behind these calm faces and direct gazes, lies a complex political proposal that draws on art history and feminist theory to build a contemporary visual language capable of contesting the established order. Ristova proves that figurative painting, far from being an exhausted medium, retains considerable critical power when handled with intelligence and political awareness. In her hands, the portrait becomes again what it always should have been: not a complacent mirror but an instrument of questioning and transformation.
- Byzantine art, Wikipedia article, consulted in October 2025.
- Korea International Art Fair 2024, KIAF official website. Presentation of the exhibition “Portraits” by Elitsa Ristova.
- Virginia Woolf, Wikipedia article, consulted in October 2025.
- Adam Szymanski, “Unmasked Emotions: Portraits of Fondness and Frustration in the 2020s”, MutualArt, November 2023.
- Quotation from Elitsa Ristova, Phillips Auction House, 2023.
