My Practice in 500 words

My practice is based on mass media images, ready-made surfaces and fragments such as magazine clippings, old photographs, reproductions, slides, stamps, as well as other materials and objects: mostly mass produced. Occasionally organic ones are incorporated.

My creations are mostly based on cut and paste techniques. Scissors and glue are my primary tools. My visual vocabulary consists mainly of eyes, lips, jewelry and flowers.

I am essentially a photographer. I was educated and trained in the field of photography from an early age. Over time I felt that photography had become irrelevant and worn-out. My interests, motivation, formation and aesthetics have remained intact, but I have returned to the practice of good-old-fashioned collage (or more accurately- Photomontage), which is now my main practice.

I identify photomontage as the photography underdog. In its basic cut and paste practice, it tends to be perceived as cheap, unworthy, rough, deformed, and grotesque. While Photography has become monumental, photomontage has remained the language of anarchist and avantgarde artistic subcultures from Dada to Punk. Indeed, it is also employed vastly in Pop-art, as a strategy used to confront capitalism and consumerism, and where the dialectics of life and art are at their peak.

In my view, photomontage is the most adequate way to embody the dissonance of our era. It is the seductive body parts, the bright luxury jewelry, color enhancement and air brushed to perfection: The ideal, desirable illusion printed on cheap flimsy chromo paper.

I am fascinated by the dualities encrypted in these materials. I have found that photomontage is the ultimate medium to express my frustration with mass media’s ideologies. I worship this imagery and at the same time despise it and reject the promotion of consumerism and the beauty regime it expresses or sometimes hides.

Naturally my body of work has a strong feminist core. Those conflicts are a part of my life as they are part of my art.  The focus on the female body in mass media is interlaced in my art. I strive to reconstruct the representations of gender in the mass media imagery in order to undermine these values.

Having said that, and keeping in mind the deadly-serious social and political connotations of my art, a key element in my body of work is humor.  It is an inherent part of my interpretation of the medium, and essential to the relationship it forms with the viewers. I always believed in killing them softly, so to speak.

The aesthetics of this imagery in chromo magazines has had a profound impact on me, and although those images are dismantled, they still appear bright, colorful and seductive in their own wild way.  It is those internal contradictions that make photomontage such an incredible practice.