Ileana Moro

This fact raises the most basic and most complex interrogation: Is there life outside of Earth? To think that we are the only living beings in the entire universe would seem a little too narcissistic. What is it then that lays out there, beyond Earth? We do not know yet, but the artist couple Ileana Moro and Marius Ritiu have made tangible their personal answer to the question.

The Antwerp-based couple have recently inaugurated a project called Allienim. As the title itself hints, the inspiration behind this new proposal is the fascination towards the possibility of life outside of Earth, and the unfamiliarity with it. Using their creative imagination and their own particular interpretation of the unknown, Allienim presents various artworks that are thought to have originated from different planets. 

The idea behind this thought-provoking conception is to translate into metal their individual perception of the unidentifiable. By exploring their imagination, Ileana and Marius have designed objects that challenge a new kind of beauty, otherworldly as they choose to describe it. The universe and what it contains remains unidentified to us humans, but Allienim is the perfect shot of what it could look like.

As the couple puts it, by capturing the rare beauty of these heavenly artifacts, their objective is to ignite curiosity in the human minds of those who view them: turning the unidentifiable into the identifiable. This seems to be a common denominator in Ileana Moro’s artworks. Extrapolating this theme to different experiences and representations, Ileana is moved by the exploration of the border between life and mysteries. 

The dark palette -Moro’s distinctive trait- serves as a means to transmit depth and anonymity. Ileana exposes the layers of experiences as an instinctive relationship to the invisible things. Her diverse artworks create a place for the spectator to reflect on the uninhabited as well as spirituality: a fascination for the mysteries of and beyond life, with an inevitable touch of romanticization that comes from her own daily existence. 

An existence that, in her way of understanding it, is always in constant creation: us humans are continuously being formed through processes of cognition, emotional expression, self-construction and soul development. We constitute much more than simple rationality. For Ileana, “the awareness intervention from the higher cosmos is present in each individual”. 

The Costa Rican artist represents abstraction, darkness and isolation into different shapes and forms through the investigation of diverse themes. What Ileana generates through these creations is provoking the one that is observing: awakening the soul by connecting with intimate emotional issues, loneliness, grief, mental statements, love and spiritual transfiguration. The spectator that observes, feels at the same time. 

The unseen is unveiled by this light that can only shine through the darkness of the shadows. She conceives the shadows as a dark omen, a teacher that guides the one who looks. In her new show Destrucformation, which will be exhibited at Ballroom Gallery until June 24th, she continues to investigate the depths of human emotion through the use of dark and oval depictions.  

These profound but bare oval forms have been illustrated using oil painting, a medium that serves Ileana to express a wide range of feelings through light veils and shadows, as she puts it. It is an emotional process through which each brushstroke allows her to reveal a soulful connection between the outer and inner worlds. 

These illustrations are oval for a specific reason. For Ileana, these empty oval forms spiritually embody the birth of an unseen identity. Empty on the canvas, but filled with a meaning of spirituality: they symbolize the eternal cycle of creation and interconnectedness of all things, very much in line with her perspective in life. With each piece that makes up Destrucformation, Ileana means to establish an invisible but palpable connection between the viewer and the divine, as a reminder that we all constitute a part of this infinite and alien puzzle that is the universe.