Ilona's work explores the socio-political 'grey' areas through a psychological lens. Through adopting diverse drawing and painting techniques in the making of her work, she disrupts and alters the imagery taken from secondary sources, drawing attention to subjects of memory, perception, cruelty and free will.
In her recent practice, Ilona uses the content found online, specifically on YouTube, to delve even more deeply into questions of perception and the role technology plays in shaping our understanding of the world and choices we make.
Her "After Karpman's" series (2018) is based on Karpman’s Drama Triangle, which suggests that the roles of victim, oppressor, and rescuer are interchangeable. By blurring the characteristics of different media, Ilona aims to represent the blurred nature of Karpman's roles and offer the viewer various avenues of interpretation.
In 2018, her works become increasingly informed by psychology, including fictional narrative, manipulation, memory and YouTube imagery. In ‘’YouTube’’ series (2018), through the process of layering and repetition, with the additional introduction of the notion of chance, Ilona delves more deeply into the question of the objectivity of our perception and the authenticity of our own memories in regard to moving imagery shown online.
Ilona’s recent work ‘An hour of my time’ (2019) considers the boundary between reality and fiction. Through the process of working, she seeks the allegory for ‘average’ YouTube users’ experience while watching horrific alongside light and funny YouTube content. The work is the result of the experiment of Ilona spending an hour watching YouTube videos, resulting from a ‘poultry, warehouse’ search, allowing herself to browse intuitively through any of the algorithm’s suggestions.
See my CV below:
ILONA SKLADZIEN
