Irena Azovsky is a collage and mixed media artist whose work has been exhibited in California, New York, and Baltimore, as well as published in a variety of magazines. Based in Los Angeles, she makes work using images from books and magazines that chronicle American culture. “The media is constantly bombarding us with imagery. Often it just goes into people’s subconscious, but there’s so much that goes into advertising in order to shape our society to be a specific way.”
In an effort to interpret this endless stream of imagery, Irena cuts, layers, and intertwines her collected samples. By subverting the images, she re-contextualizes their meaning. As a result, her work acts as an instigator for cultural inquiry and critique.
I like the idea of utilizing imagery to critique the media’s expectations of society. By intertwining layers in a way that morphs those visuals, the viewer can’t rely on the context of the original image.
Irena graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in General Fine Arts. Throughout her time there, she dabbled in a wide range of mediums, including silk screening, life drawing, and painting. She found her niche senior year. “The collages came out of my thesis project. They just started pouring out. Something clicked and I thought, I could make a lot of these and it feels right.”
To see more of Irena’s work, stay in her living gallery at ARTlab DX in Boston. If you cannot make the trip, visit her website or shop her work online!