5-Minute Bedtime Stories
First book by Maria Gvardeitseva, released by the leading art world publisher SKIRA
A poetic scandal!
Irresistibly seductive and beautifully written.
5 Minute Bedtime Stories is a collection of fairy tales that examine separation from a feminist perspective, weaving narrative, research, and visual art. The book comprises twelve stories named after female protagonists whom Gvardeitseva interviewed, an introductory dialogue with Dr. Bernadette Buckley (Goldsmiths), and a concluding essay by curator Nadine Khalil.
In 5 Minute Bedtime Stories, Maria Gvardeitseva has reimagined centuries of fairy tales and folklore from a feminist position. In her 21-century iteration, female characters are no longer helpless princesses without agency; they are incarnations of women reborn with self-love and actualisation. Using interviews with real women about their experiences of divorce, Gvardeitseva transforms these into magical tales of reinvention and rediscovery. Images of the author’s artworks are interspersed between each tale. Based on her research into the institution of marriage across several cultures, these artworks are, in turns, ghoulish and beautiful, creating the perfect visual companions to her ingenious texts.
— Kathy Battista, writer, educator, and curator, and author of New York New Wave: The Legacy of Feminist Art in Emerging Practice and Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Art in 1970s London
Gvardeitseva first introduced the 5 Minute Bedtime Stories project in 2023 as a solo exhibition in Fitzrovia Gallery, London. Two years later, this poignant reflection on separation through the female optic culminates in an octavo volume with a soft, pillow-like binding, bringing forward selected works from the exhibition and introducing new pieces created specifically for print.
Launch events & performance
The launch will kick off on 5 November in Milan with a book signing at the SKIRA boutique on Via Meravigli, 18.
Paris will follow on 11 November with a talk and book signing.
On 20 November in London, Maria Gvardeitseva will host a panel discussion on the sociocultural aspect of separation followed by a reading of selected stories.
Book Launch Event Details
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Milan book signing
5 November, 6:30pm – 8pm
SKIRA bookshop, Via Meravigli 18, 20121 Milano
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London panel discussion & book signing
20 November, 6:30pm – 8pm
Hästens Marylebone, 79–81 Wigmore St, London W1U 1DL
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Paris book signing
11 December, 6:30pm – 8pm
SKIRA boutique, 28 rue de Grenelle, 75007 Paris
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Please register interest to attend with anastasia@landerlander.com
In fairy tales, the hero steps outside the institution and begins a new journey. I use this structure to examine divorce not as failure but as initiation — a deliberate passage into a new stage of life. My book offers women a framework to understand separation as transformation, not shame, and to recognise their own agency in reconstructing identity, relationships, and happiness.
— Maria Gvardeitseva
