Marianna Ignatakiexplores themes like the Double – the different versions or the other side –, the mask, identity and self-determination, eroticism, magic; through the staging of certain rituals, and is mainly focused on the psycho-emotional aspect: a dream becoming a nightmare, the attraction of terror, situations of crisis and impasse, good and evil, male and female, the ambiguous feelings carnival might provoke and the freedom it offers...
Marianna Ignataki’s work is anthropocentric. She combines a variety of media, which interact with each other, such as drawing, performance and installation using ready-made and sculptural objects, in order to create surrealistic environments. The presence of symbolic objects is significant in the entire body of her work. Surrealistic elements with ambiguous functions and fetish objects that stem from her personal mythology create narratives, based on their symbolic roles.
She explores themes like the Double – the different versions or the other side –, the mask, identity and self-determination, eroticism, magic; through the staging of certain rituals, and is mainly focused on the psycho-emotional aspect: a dream becoming a nightmare, the attraction of terror, situations of crisis and impasse, good and evil, male and female, the ambiguous feelings carnival might provoke and the freedom it offers. Her protagonists are women-witches, animals and hybrids. There is often an implication of an unspecified – or even perverse – eroticism, which does not concern sexuality in the sense of sexual acts, but the mental processes of erotic desire; our instincts, our hidden dark side.
Inverting or perverting the initial meaning of a scene by adding an unexpected detail – often with a sense of black humor – is a strategy discernible in the entirety of her work. It could be like playing a game, where an act can never be completed and a feeling can never exist without the possibility of it being reversed. Corporality – experiencing the procedure through different media in all its physical substantiality – is a necessity, and is conducive to the enactment of some sort of personal exorcism.
