Ilona Senghore

Ilona’s images interpret her reflection on society. She translates questions about men’s relationship with his environment and contradictions she observes, in various lively shapes, sculptures and paintings, that can have an alienating effect. Ilona understands the inevitability of being inconsequent, but she still tries in her own ‘naive way’ to encourage the observer of her work to reflect on this. Her colourful glazed ceramics are examples in which she tries this. The world around her brings up strong associations in which Ilona finds a symbolic meaning. To capture this as an inspiration for her work she photographs ordinary architecture: the flat she lived in as a child, bunkers from World War II along the coast, long chimneys in industrial area’s, but also sea, dunes and forests. Objects that are not used anymore and are therefore cut off from their meaning also intrigue her. This abandonment stirs a feeling of melancholy that Ilona recognises as a metaphor for us human beings. After all, all human beings loose their purpose in the end and experience an evanescent life. This same experience occurs to her in her job as activities coach in a nursing home. She coaches the residents to express themselves in their drawings and paintings, despite of their physical or mental problems. Through this way of coaching and working together, people who can hardly do anything independently can express themselves, and find a renewed meaning. This process draws Ilona closer to herself as well, and the practice of doing this for many years has ripened her. The act of drawing leads Ilona to her subconscious mind and her emotions. When she started working in the nursing home she quitted drawing because it subconsciously brought up the painful world from her job. Now, after 24 years, she picked up this way of drawing again and experienced that it helped her process her emotions in symbolic drawings. This symbolism occurs inevitably also in her sculptures and paintings. Finally, drawing seems for Ilona the ideal therapeutic way out of the conflicts inflicted by daily life. Experiences that keep buzzing around in her head, disrupting her thoughts, are crystallised in her drawings and reveal her subconscious. This results in absurd and surreal scenes. From her drawings and photographed observations, Ilona forges a synthesis to shape her vision on the world in her sculptures.