BIO
IIrina Lakicevic/ I.La , born in 1988 , is a digital artist and evolutionary theorist, currently based in London, UK.
Born in Kosovo and a victim of war that affected the area in 1999, the artist and her family spent 5 years in a refugee camp in Northern Norway (8 years in total in war displacement) before being granted permit residency.
Upon finishing high-school (as one of the top graduates 2007 Sandnessjoen, Norway), the artist enrolled at the University of Odontology in Bergen, graduating in 2012 as Master of Odontology. Alongside working as a state – employed dentist ( mainly with children and the elderly), the artist started developing a lifestyle/fashion/art-direction blog which has within a few years made her into an internationally acclaimed face in the industry. By challenging postulates of how to dress, the artist became a pioneer in the field and has established herself as an icon with the help of street style photographers and numerous fashion magazines (Numerous Vogue’s, Harper’s Bazaar etc, Elle).
In 2018 the artist quit her job in Odontology and moved to London in order to work in the fashion industry.
However, upon arrival the challenging aspect of female values juxtapositioned to their bodies provided a need to step back and re-asses coordinates which led to complete withdrawal from lime-light.
During that time sheer captivation with emergence of meaning and warranted transfer moved into the art practice, and as a child of a former neurologist and psychiatrist (her mother was a head of Neurology Dep. in Pristina) the formal language employed in art was quickly understood for its transcendental capacity and potential it offered.
Slowly but steadily, the artist regained footing and came to recognise layers, depth and potential buried within the lines of art theory and evolutionary premises in connection to the body as a vessel that moves through linearity.
Simultaneously, due to the natural predisposition for cognitive sciences, the artist developed an interest in physics and neurocognitive aspects of human behaviour, culminating in a manuscript
‘Signs by the road, a yellow ball and the sorting hat – on the origin of life and consciousness’ where the artist employs language to retroactively highlight
phase transition between the animate and inanimate.
The book follows implications that emerge as soon as a system starts becoming aware of its internal state and ‘its’ existence relying upon measuring such state and recognising it as its own from the very onset.
Within that time the artist has gone through a major shift in the directionality as the understanding of the materialisation and toxicity connected to traditional medium has led to change towards the digital. This is readily visible within the scope of linearity of the presented oeuvre, culminating in feminist digital works.
Taking a step back from the traditional mediums, the artist started creating her paintings digitally and employing printing on velvet (shimmer, 340gsm) as a technique.
The aspect of the practice that draws attention is the very play between compression, transfer and reproduction of information – with emphasis on embedded energy and ‘convincingness’ and ‘aliveness’ of the works after being subjected to printing.
By pushing her limits within the capacity of hyper-realistical representation and with the intention to achieve same depth and resonance as an oil painting, the artist a deals with the concept close to her heart – namely the realm of the real and the value of work defined and recognised for (and by) the embedded resonance within the domain of perception. This particular focus on aliveness, render and compression are particularly interesting as the artist was born with amblyopia and a flatter apprehension of depth – perception than those with normal eyesight.
Apart from minor writings and musings the artist has also written an article that connects to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ and extracts its essence alongside developing a theory concerning the acceptance of digital art in the present and future.
The article can be read and listened here.
Contact: Irina.lakicevic@gmail.com
I.La 