Ilona Szwarc

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA

Artist statement

I am a woman and I feast on memory. I am a woman and I construct through deconstruction. I perform myself. As a foreigner to this country, I stand outside the dominant order while immersed in my own process of becoming. This position, unique in that it is my own, and communal in that it is a space I share with so many others, is the source of my interrogation. As a woman, it is in my nature to engage a perpetual process of creation, turning the self into an experiment in reproduction. Employing the use of look-alikes, women who I believe share my general appearance, I am exploring aspects of mirroring, staging and performance, seeing myself in the face of the other. I am interested in notions of becoming - how an individual assimilates and makes oneself imperceptible in society while engaging a series of internal transformations aimed at finding a kernel of truth amidst the noise. Taking inspiration from stage make-up tutorials, I am playing with the surfaces that we construct to produce and affirm our identity. The intersection of painting, cinema and theatre allows me to adopt a directorial mode and test the nature of authority, perhaps even wresting it from the arms of culture. By following instruction manuals and reinterpreting them through my female gaze, often mimicking the persona of a male make-up artist, I am able to see what happens when gender roles are reversed and lines blur between passive and active bodies. By dismantling these false constructs, by taking...

Artwork