My works explore the history of the body, focusing on individual and collective fears and fantasies. In installations, sculptures and drawings I am analyzing restrictions, anxieties and guilt mechanisms, as well as emancipation discourses arisen in such contexts. Medical theories, social beliefs, religious ideas that have shaped the image of women in history, as well as the influence of these discourses on our contemporary society, are central to my work. Since 2018 I am using archival materials to develop works that question gendered forms of punishment, collective violence and the resurrection of shaming and stigmatization practices in the 20th and 21st centuries.
ILEANA PASCALAU (b. 1985 in Caransebes, Romania) studied Fine Arts and Art History at the National University of Arts in Bucharest and at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Between 2010-2012 she was a teaching assistant for Drawing and Printmaking at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. In 2012 Ileana was awarded a DAAD scholarship for artists. She received several grants and scholarships (The Reed Foundation, BRD Bucuresti, Kulturstiftung des Landes Schleswig-Holstein, etc.), and participated in artist residency programs in France, Italy, Turkey or Austria. Parallel to her artistic practice, Ileana is teaching visual culture at the Muthesius School of Fine Arts in Kiel.
Ileana Pascalau lives and works in Berlin..