Ayline Olukman
FRANCE
Instagram @aylineolukman
Ayline Olukman is a multimedia artist whose work addresses the notion of intimacy, solitude and wandering, resulting in photography, painting, writing and drawing. She was born in Strasbourg, France in 1981 and graduated with an MFA from L’École des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg (ESAD) in 2005. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including at Aperture Contemporary, NYC, Art Shanghai, China, Contemporary Istanbul, and her work has been published in magazines and book editions including Médiapop Edition, NOVO and Fisheye. Following a position as Artist in Residence in 2015 at Point B in Brooklyn, NY, USA, Olukman lived and worked in NYC until 2018. In 2018, she held the position of Artist in Residence at the International Center of Art Of Shangjin China. In 2019 Olukman won the Verzasca Prize 2019 (Switzerland) for her series Psyché (later called La mue) La mue, is published in October 2019, selected among the best photo books 2019 by the PHMuseum. September 2020, she is invited by the Mulhouse photography biennial to the discussion panel around the photographic book.
• SERIES •
The Molt
Like a classical painter, I staged this photo series in my painting studio and outdoor locations. I see these indoor and outdoor landscapes as space where the body meets nature and negotiates their differences and similarities. I collect objects, some unchanging, others like flowers and fruits I let rot. Perishable subjects are attractive to me because of their observable transition. Their skin become a material that I love to look at, a new texture and color appear. I use vegetation as a visual language to link still life, landscape, and portraiture. My study focuses on the process of creation itself, the search for a sense of belonging to the world and to my female body. The boundary of the skin is an intimate yet universal geography that is the red thread of my work.
I am interested in the visual symbolism, the ephemeral quality of organic matter to represent the time or recurrence of the water element as the original matrix, the feminine. These symbols punctuate my images and form a personal rebus that wants to be common and inclusive. The look is solicited in a continuous exchange between the outside and the inside, the reflection of the mirror is a hand extended towards the spectator.