A visual experimental study of what is not the self, I.

A visual survey of what I am not, but I think I am. 

A visual study of what I am.

A visual study of the fluctuations in the mind 

A visual experiment of the fluctuations of emotions. 

This project is not just a visual experiment, but a mental one as well. It’s an interactive exploration of the ‘external’ world, inviting you to engage with your surroundings in a new way.

This project is a visual experiment that explores the concept of ‘melting in the chaos.’ It is a methodology that involves denying all that the mind identifies as itself, including dogmas and ideas. Once the mind recognizes these elements, we deny them as part of the self, leading to a sense of peace in chaos. 

This project is inspired by the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, a philosopher who also explored the nature of the self and the relationship between the individual and society.

It is an ongoing visual experiment in which I digitally cropped myself out of the selfies and pictures of myself and filled the empty content with deformed visual information from the surroundings. This transformative project reflects how our surroundings shape us - and vice-versa, inspiring a new perspective on self and identity. 

The delimitation of the self is done in a very soft manner. Some of the works are more obvious, some more delicate; just as the feeling of separation of the self from the environment is more substantial, sometimes a dissolvation of the identity with the external world occurs. This also happens in the context of the artist’s studio, where the desolvation happens almost 100%, and the environment and the self merge, reaching an undistinctive and abstract identity. 

As the winds and waters shape a stone, the sea shapes the sand, or the flame by the wind, how do our surroundings shape us - and vice versa? And more than that, when do we say - stop: ’This is me, this is the air touching my skin’?  

Where do we finish, and where does our environment begin? Where does the ‘inside’ stop and the ‘outside’ end? Where do I start, and when do You finish?

Ms-selfie began as a project based on the photos made during the documentation of my diploma - Selfie Analugue.

As the process of making is very important phase in practice (personally I consider it the most valuable) the documentation pictures proved themselves to be flourishing and took the shape of this project.. Regarding the concept behind my diploma- that the selfie and the simple act of taking photos of yourself turned into a habbit- and not only - gives birth to a new image, a distorted one, which the individual identifies himself with (link - https://anaolar.squarespace.com/#/selfi-analogue/ ) For this reason, I decided to erase myself from the documentation, and explore the options which the new visual experiment was offering.

Edit was a a part of a bigger project built together with a group of 4 other artists where all of us blended our works together. My bit was called Edit which had 2 elements: the edited walls and the edited book. Briefly, the purpose of those was to promote a visual language, understandable by everyone, without needing words.

‘By carefully editing the walls Olar has revealed a ‘meta-text'. Holes revealed, tape and paint layers peeled back, new marks excavated from past students in the studio. For Olar, this process explores her concern that art should be understood as expression and experience and not through the tools of written or coded, spoken language. In this space, Olar has created a language, in which traces, underlines, personal marks and symbols act unconsciously. As her title implies, Relational Aesthetics, from Bourriaud's text, she is concerned with encounter, proximity and resisting social formatting.’ - Esther Windsor, Curator, MA Fine Art Programme Leader

The show took part in Birimgham School of Arts, Birmingham UK, in September 2018

Clay Play Catch is a project that grew from a strong desire to stay in touch with close friends and family from home while I was living in the UK.

Clay Play Catch represents a statement for the people who have to leave their home countries and hometowns to study or earn a living away. Due to various political or social challenges, many people don’t view this transaction as a pleasure, but rather as a necessity. One could feel that he’s cast off his home to find a better life for himself and/or his family.

This feeling of distance translated into a personal art project called Clay Play Catch. I decided to send a wet ball of clay from Birmingham, the temporary place I was living, to my parents in Bucharest. It was my way of getting in touch withhome. They have been sending the ball back to me (after they watered it to keep its softness), and I send it back to them, and so on, several times. Those were the project's instructions. My purpose was to record the distance between me and them, which distance evolved into a personal archive and, lately, into an installation. The project was an experimental and progressive one, which also had a profound therapeutic effect, serving as a form of emotional release and a means of processing the distance between us.

First, the material I used was essential. Clay has its properties of being soft, malleable and able to empathise with its surroundings, on one hand (which reflects the way I interact with mine). On the other hand, it can be very hard and stiff too. (For more details about the properties of the clay and experiments, I invite you to visit my Tumblr page: http://anaioanaolar.tumblr.com/)

Next, as I mentioned earlier, Clay Play Catch was an experiment, so I wasn’t supposed to know what would happen next or what the consequences of this project might be. That being said, at some point, when I sent the parcel to Bucharest, my beloved ball of clay got lost somewhere between Birmingham and Bucharest. It never arrived in Bucharest, nor was it returned to Birmingham. At this point in the process, I decided to take advantage of the situation and put up the exhibition called Clay Play Catch - In Memoriam at the IPS space in the Birmingham School of Art in the Spring of 2018.

So, I recalled all the objects that surrounded the ball of clay in my last received parcel, as one does after a loss (in Romanian tradition, at least), exhibited them, and gave the objects away afterwards.

The selfie project started with an interplay between paint and my body. The module of expression was my face. I chose this part of the body because simply it is the most expressing and the temple of senses. With the organs of the face, one can smell, touch, taste, see and hear. All senses included. The face is a map of the entire body, the mind, and emotions.

I painted it and printed on various surfaces, experiment with textures and mediums until I reached a satisfactory result. For the Digital Selfie, I used intaglio techniques to print my face on metal. After the whole process was complete, I scanned it, translating it into a digital form - from traditional printing to a virtual environment. Then I started playing with it in various programs and it became like a brush: started multiplying, deforming, changing colors, nuances, just to see how volatile can it be.

Soon I was going to realize that this whole process seemed like the one forming an image, from pixels. An analogy in the process (and not only) of forming the seen reality, from particle to body, from micro to macro, from letter to the word, from word to sentence. From dot to the line, to 3D space, and so on. Just that in this situation, the dot was my face. I want to mention that in my works, one most important highlight is that observation itself is the purpose. The visual result is the form of the tool I’m handling during this process. Just as our bodies during this lifetime, or the hands for painting or writing.

The entire works, every one of them is generated from the reinterpretation, contextualization, and translation of the same core particle: my face, the reinterpreted Selfie.

Cyanotype, or 'sun printing’, is a photographic technique directly harnessing natural light, inspired by the idea of 'drawing with light' from Man Ray's camera-less experiments.

The project seeks a dialogue between nature's timeless essence and the evolving course of history. Rocks, leaves, and branches blend with discovered plastic items, complemented by classic camera-captured photographs for added abstraction.

The project visually unfolds from plastic bags to rocks, sparking discourse between the enduring (nature) and the mutable (plastic items). Nature, a historical constant despite changes, symbolises constancy amid evolving flora.

This narrative extends to plastic items as totems of our era. The ubiquitous plastic bag becomes a potent symbol, representing the rapid pace of consumerism and our culture's immediacy—an artifact destined to await discovery by future archaeologists.

The camera-less photography process is a contemplative journey. The sun's movement during exposure, especially with three-dimensional objects, creates detailed imprints. Shadows and image accuracy reflect this contemplative process, contrasting with the rapidity of traditional photography. Prolonged exposure encourages deeper contemplation.

In our fast-paced culture, the project urges a pause to appreciate nature's intricacies. It highlights the fundamental role of light, primarily from the sun, in enabling sight—the lens through which we perceive the world. Amid the rush, it becomes a metaphorical lens, urging us to slow down and acknowledge the timeless dance between light, nature, and history.

Poems and songs of discovering devotion, learning about love, on the banks of Ganga, the islands of Greece and streets of Bucharest.

Fragments of more scketchbooks found from 2014 to 2017

//to many things happen and can’t remember them all//

Selfie - Analogue was my B.A. diploma project. The work questions the identity of man nowadays, one confusing the image of himself with the advertised one on social media platforms. Due to this contradiction, the project has been approached traditionally and raw, adopting Ana Mendieta’s manner. The “Selfie” project contained six face-printed acrylic canvases and one video, as process documentation.

Portraits of Străulești is a series of 3 works made for a Neighbourhood Portraits (RO/ Portrede de Cartier) project designed by a group of romanian artists called Antistatic.

Străulești is a quarter at the edge of Bucharest, Romania, where nothing much happens.

Lady Red, Warm composition, Blue house

-mixed media, 100/100 cm, 2019

The paintings show the Străulești vibe: they are fragments of shots from the neighbourhood, illustrated in a traditional manner, with static composistions, nothing disturbing, quiet and easy to understand or interact to.

The first show took place in Straulesti in Mobile Gallery (RO/ Galeria Mobilă) and the second in the downtown of Bucharest at the Street Delievery Festival, in Mobile Gallery as well, both in June 2019.