Mira Alibek - FBLE :: Dreams

Mira Alibek

In my recent work, I have been grappling with how human perception is changing in the modern world. Fast cuts, non-linear understanding of time, abbreviated digital language have influenced our narratives and experiences and also my artwork. My work is based on "reading between the lines," and involves intertwining multiple themes and POVs into one piece rather than building a traditional linear narrative or asserting one point of view. In the modern media overload, the audience is constantly asked to synthesize its own meaning from barrage of symbols, images and tag lines, and I am interested in pushing this kind of perception to its limits. Taking traditional narrative formats and styles, I like to pull them apart and reconstruct them into video installations and mixed media pieces. I use a lot of technical serial imagery and icons as signifiers of something larger conceptually, building semblances of stories by repeating them in various context. I strive for my pieces to be multi-facetted experiences, evoking various and sometimes contradictory reactions in its audience, depending on their point of entrance and their life experiences. Throughout my artistic practice, I have also been fascinated with patterns as symbols of order and regularity, as modern derivatives of formalistic grids. Depending on how one pattern is rendered however, if it is drawn or printed and on its context, the audience can feel it as a symbol of order or of personal chaos. My visual aesthetic is influenced by children's animation and illustration, as well as digital culture and advertising, and becomes a mix of hand-drawn and digital imagery. Visual references to children's stories are both a method and a commentary. It's a way to draw the audience into my artwork, to refer to a time, when their perception and imagination were in overdrive. But it is also a commentary on how our modern adult understanding can become infantile and weak and how grown-up some concepts are that younger generation deals with today.