by Claire Iono
9th to 24th January 2021
Claire Iono, Aurovilian artist, has been living and working in Auroville for the past 10 years.
Her abstract paintings are a true expression of her own personal adventure to fulfil the profound spiritual longing that is at the core of her artistic research.
The art of Claire Iono is an expression of the unfolding of her inner journey.
She intuitively fluctuates between the abstract and the figurative, creating subtle worlds that evoke imaginary and symbolic landscapes, where nature is animated. In her visual storytelling there are no boundaries between realms, instead they simply unfold into each other in a kind of continuum.
Hidden cities was born from Claire’s aspiration to integrate in a new direction her past, present and future artistic explorations and practices.
The title of the exhibition “Hidden cities” refers to what cannot be seen within us that emerges; it is also a nod to the lost mythical cities.
The symbolic and allegorical cityscapes, timeless and unknown, may sometimes evoke metropolises or some undiscovered cities.
“The cities are a metaphor of our limitations and resistances”, says Claire, “and that’s actually the parallel I make, it’s between walls and limitations, they form layers of all that must transform in us. The journey to experience this inner transformation is not a linear ascending process but rather a multi dimensional one”; and this is how Claire etches out her visual narrative, playing with different planes.
She pursues: “And they are layers and layers to be transformed at different levels, nested in each other, strata of our small and large stories of now and before. The mythical cities are present remains of an attempt of a new world and in this adventure of a new man, we also carry these experiences”.
Her iridescent paintings are always alight with a fire which is the manifestation of the will that allows us to overcome limitations. “These tormented skies may sometimes seem dramatic but actually they always relate to something beautiful, something that wants to transform, it is where all the possibilities lie.The skies represent these possibilities”, she explains, “and on Earth, there is a sea or a river, a flow, that allows us to link everything. “
For Claire, words and images go hand in hand and it is from this prose that sounds like a prayer, that this series started two years ago:
May these cities we build inside ourselves
become those tiny silhouettes far away,
May these walls disappear,
and the New World will come.
This is how the exhibition opens, like a call, an aspiration, with several paintings for which the titles speak by themselves , A New World will come, A Rising World, The ascent…
Claire Iono’s evocative and imaginary is effortlessly fused to create an image of hope and life, with this positive energy that radiates through the beautifully ethereal world that manifests in her work.
This year, Claire was a finalist of the national competition Ora Mojarto and of the international exhibition, Art revolution Taipei in Taiwan; she has joined the artists catalogue of Kalakriti Art Gallery, one major gallery in India.
Hidden Cities is her third solo show in Auroville.