mixed media. AilUJ PEARL series
Performance portraiture: concerned with the formation of the Self: in relation to: and through: contemporary communication technologies. AILUJ’s moniker, imaged through the inversion of The Selfie, is constructed via filtering screens and projection, and developed through algorithm codes sourced from everyday digital infrastructures.
The Artist produces work under five distinct yet interrelated monikers. Each operates for/from a different medium, with material choices reflecting the specific dimension of engagement. These planes of materialization function together as a choreographed metaphor: Theoretics. Through the production of theory that is not bound by language, the work isolates and examines both the limits and the influence of linguistic structures — a primary arena of analysis throughout.
The practice aims towards a liberation: as an ongoing process of disentanglement of “The Self” from the structures that inform or constrain both experience and perception alike. Within what can be known, and too, the very process of knowing itself. Through performance, image, and coded models (sculpture, choreography, soundscape, scent, and shadow), the work attempts to isolate and expose, thus allowing a broader avenue of Realization.
For AILUJ PEARL, and all 5 monikers alike, the concern of the work is self-sourced. This series reflects the unidentified frustrations on the value-currencies liked within social media’s landscape of 2010-2020, and onward. In order to approach this location of participation, the artist deprogrammed, engaging in meditational practices with different ego-engagement from the one dominant and required.
A practitioner of the darkroom, designing original printmaking techniques of works shared: the annenberg space for photography los angeles, museum c/o berlin, the fotografiska museet stockholm, maison particuliere centre d'art bruxelles, multimedia art museum moscow, nordic light international festival of photography kristiansund, st. moritz art masters art and culture festival, and the acte2 gallery paris, galerie de l'aimance casablanca, camerawork berlin, christophe guye galerie zurich, cwc gallery berlin, the empty quarter gallery dubai, flo peters gallery hamburg, hamiltons gallery london, hartman gallery barcelona, hasted kraeutler gallery new york, izzy gallery toronto, kahmann gallery amsterdam, noorderlicht photogallery the netherlands, photographers limited editions vienna, qvale galleri oslo, young gallery bruxelles, as well as works including drawing and mixed media for the deichtorhallen museum haus der photographie hamburg, rautenstrauch-joest museum cologne.