Apollinariia Ilina
Russia
Artist's contact
limited edition
«Break. Step 2»
Photography, 2022
“If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” José Saramago, Blindness Project «Break. Step 2» is the second part of my long project about breaking with the past, with hopes and expectations. A project created by the terrible events that began on February 24. This is the story of a little man trapped in a ruthless totalitarian system.
Integration into nature and building your own world in yourself is dedicated to this project. The first emotions and tears subsided. Fear and apprehension have become a common companion in everyday life. The system is tightening the screws more and more and adopting absurd and cruel laws. Every day you think that tomorrow they will forbid you to breathe. A person turns more and more into an animal when the bonding of the pack occurs according to common views.
People continue to live, die and kill, even in those territories where there is no war. Society has not entered an indifferent state, it just continues to survive as best it can. The only way that a little person can find for himself is to turn to nature and distance himself from society. On the one hand, this is a way of escape in an attempt to find truth and protection, on the other hand, turning to the skeletons of human existence, to the roots in a broader sense.
Constant search is the main motive of this project. The search for trust, through nature and trust in the basic laws of the universe, and not to specific people and their views and judgments. Nature lives according to a rigid system built on the natural perception of humanism and justice. She does not judge and does not condemn. And it is in this system built over millennia that I am trying to find points of support, justice and humanism.
Statement
Apollinariia explores in her works the psychology of perception in the context of working with the subconscious and dialogue with it. The fixation of dialogue as an individual's internal reflection constitutes the body of her art. Having studied the history of art for many years, working as a cinematographer in cinema, Apollinariia came to the problems of perception psychology in her research.
Perception in art means a complex relationship between visual stimuli embedded in a cultural and historical context and their personal understanding of the individual. The artist builds her work on projects on observation and communication with people. Then Apollinariia refines the experience into a dialogue of the external and internal Self. The duality of perceptions, the desire to always see the other person's point of view encourages her to work with mirrors and reflective surfaces, interpreting the ideas of reality distortion. Dialogue always has different interpretations, as well as the mirror always reflects and refracts, distorting reality. In her projects, she turns to working with borderline states, processing memory and sensations in reality and imagination. For the last year, the artist has been working on the problems of adapting the creation to a changing world. She talks to the socio-political problems of the artist inside the system, destroying the physical and moral foundations. The artist explores how the body and soul react to fear, and how a dialogue and a clash of the external and internal in a person takes place.