Art Project
Folie à deux
The subject of the art project Folie à deux is based on contemplating various aspects of dualism in figuration through the relationship between eternal dualities: body–mind, male–female, exterior–interior, self–other, subjective–objective, private–public, while the means is the optimal use of repetition and constructing the image through layers as a inherent media capacity of printmaking. The dualism that I engage with on multiple levels in my works throughout this research can be connected to the concept borrowed from psychology, folie à deux, which literally translates to "madness shared by two" and refers to a disorder that arises when two emotionally very close people, after a certain time, begin to completely share the same delusional ideas, fanatical beliefs, phobias, and even psychopathic behavior. According to Fromm, the cause of all human anxiety lies in the striving to overcome one's isolation and loneliness, and one does so through another, through unification in the experience of love, which can be sensual, emotional, and spiritual. The inability to achieve this union and overcome polarity leads to frustration, anxiety, and alienation, which is the defining image of the century we live in. I attempt to represent this through the correlation of two individuals and the context in which I place them.
Using the logic of printmaking, which follows my mental flow, I divide the work into several layers, each of which, in a technical sense, is a separate pass, while conceptually I explore certain aspects of dualism through the depiction of its specific forms. Bodies positioned in a particular relationship within space, which are the same figures repeated several times in a minimally altered scenography, in a different correlation with another matrix figure, illustrate the dualistic relationship taking place between them. The relationship between the represented individuals and the context in which they are placed, which often depicts the impossibility of both realizing and overcoming the union between them, represents frustration, anxiety, and personal introspection from the perspective of a woman, mother, artist, and author.
The works are executed using a combination of intaglio techniques such as aquatint, etching, and sugar lift, along with relief printing and chine colle, printed on standard gallery size printmaking papers including Fabriano 70x100 cm and Hahnemühle 105x78 cm, combined with rice paper on certain works.
