self fabricated- Ilona Anderson

Ilona Anderson was one of the artists in self-fabricated that I knew the least about. She does not have a website so my access to her work before the show installed was quite limited.

This actually led me to having a very wonderful fresh experience with work that I rarely get. She makes work inspired from her childhood in South Africa and the dangers and discomforts that environment made her so acutely aware of but also of the delight that exists in human life. (The above work is from her response pieces to the Kimono. She chose to be inspired by the colors of the kimono and make a series of almost kama sutra like embroideries. They were beautiful illustrations of sensuality.)

The result of her work is both poignant and complex but also playful and "delightful." Most of the work she exhibited were smaller scale linens embroidered with everyday but potentially dangerous items like a pocket knife, barbed wire or an open box of matches.

The contrast of the ladylike doily, careful hand embroidery and potentially hazardous object was compelling.

 

She also had on display her installation "the South African tea party."

 She describes her work as:

In South Africa, where I am from, we see all around us people suffering from poverty, AIDS, violence and corruption. Although these are issues that are heightened in that society, I know that all people experience suffering. What I want to do in my work is somehow to cut through all of this, and try to express some of the basic goodness and wise ordinariness that we all experience. I want to invoke a sense of delight, celebrate a way of knowing that reveals life to be both comical and terribly poignant...

In the catalogue the author writing about her work mentions how with the everyday banality of her actual subject matter it articulates the everyday experience of fearing for your life or fearing bodily harm in environments such as Ilona's childhood South Africa.

 

I very much look forward to seeing more of Ilona's work in the future and hopefully her too!