Tiko El Outa's Art Exhibition
'Identity Crisis'
By Alyona Futsur
October 7, 2022
The identity crisis is the profound process of transformation, disintegration, and recomposition, often not lived at its fullest due to its unpleasant nature. What do we feel when our identity goes through a crisis? In her Identity Crisis collection, Tiko El Outa raises the question of the human mentality's multi-layered nature, where the historical, emotional, physical, and social coexist in different proportions and change their form once new experiences and values surface.
The storyline of this collection is the unleashing of the Evil Self or the darker sides of humans, manifested in such concepts as politics, consumption, ideology and its duality, and the dynamic of the feminine generation. Enveloping and abrupt, clear and blurred, fragmented and completed images and strokes against an impeccably bright and lively background, this is who Tiko is, how her layered personality manifests itself in the here and now.
“Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of imprisonment,” says Tiko.
Tiko El Outa is an artist who explores the deeper truths of the individual and raises questions of identity, authenticity, and realness in her art. Her Identity Crisis collection is a three-year exploration of how global factors such as politics, society, ideology, consumer psychology, and family ties affect the individual and what changes it provokes.
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"Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of imprisonment," says Tiko. "I have been seeking freedom all my life, and at the same time, I was aware of the evil self. My grandmother grew up in Georgia under the communist regime. She didn't know what freedom meant, so she accepted life under extreme restrictions. On the other hand, my mother grew up with the idea of breaking that bond and had a deep desire for independence, so one day, we fled to Germany. I experienced two extremes— pure chaos and pure order.
Untitled, Oil on canvas 20"× 24"
Understanding both sides, which are good and bad, makes you the negotiator. There will follow multiple Identity crises, but the question remains: Who the hell am I? What am I doing with my life? What is my history? How do I integrate my evil self? What role does social influence play? Every thought follows the truth, and only truth can be told by the Artist."
Untitled, Oil on canvas 30"× 40"
Tiko visually depicts chaos, indecision, fears, incomprehension, and anxiety through bright, saturated colors and pronounced strokes. In the realm of the unknown and total disorder, the ominous takes on a negative connotation, but is self really that evil, or is that what we are all taught?
Even though all of the paintings in the collection are untitled, they appear as a single thread of storytelling - each artwork transitions into another, like pieces of personality magnetically attracted and revealing their story to whoever is willing to look. Healthy aggression and manifestation is the free self, and it doesn't have to be Evil anymore. It is simply there and ready to reveal itself to the viewer.
