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THE VISUAL ALLEGORIES OF IOANNA NATSIKOU

The Greek photographer disrupts reality in mysterious and colorful visual narratives that probe the exploration of self, identity, and femininity.

© Ioanna Natsikou

Her images question the body and the representation of women in their intimacy. Ioanna Natsikou started photography in 2017 when she decided to retrain by taking a course at the Athens School of Fine Arts. And that was the obvious. Her leitmotif? To disrupt reality and use the power of imagination in stories between reality and fiction. Like her series Interlude in Blue and Filter Object. The Athenian artist-photographer has been challenging boundaries in a poetic way ever since, through a masterful play of color and light, while integrating elements of theater, film, and performance. She completes this work by also putting herself on stage to better explore the themes she tackles and probe her own introspection. Ioanna Natsikou never ceases to pique our curiosity. Obviously, her intuition in this change of direction was not mistaken; she has exhibited in the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, and has won several awards, including the Grand Prize for the best amateur photographer of the year in 2020 at the Fine Art Photography Awards.

© Ioanna Natsikou

Multisens

Interlude in Blue is a series of self-portraits that address urban loneliness, isolation, alienation, social, and psychological dislocation and estrangement from the self. She explores this fissure between the identity of the being and its reality in the world, while evoking the beauty of reverie and the contemplated subject, turned on itself. The female character, from behind and unidentified, invites the viewer to a dialogue between visible and invisible, reality and the effect of reality in the scenography. The very cinematographic light sublimates the juxtaposition of intense colors. For its part, Filter Object questions the identity constructions around the notions of femininity and representation of the female body. Ioanna Natsikou plays with all kinds of objects and materials that she strips of their meaning to create other sensory perceptions. The fragmented female figure serves as a canvas to highlight this strangeness in a playful, surreal, and poetic process. In these two series, everything combines to break stereotypes, trigger fantasies, mysteries and ambiguities, and re-interrogate the meaning of beauty, eroticism, and femininity.

© Ioanna Natsikou
© Ioanna Natsikou

https://ioannanatsikou.com/

Nathalie Dassa

Photo credits Ioanna Natsikou