Your name
Aimilia Balaska
Place of birth
Johannisburg, South Africa
Place where you live now
Athens, Greece
3 words to describe you
Introspective, experimental, daring
Why do you take pictures?
I aim to channel my raw emotions, to amplify my voice as a woman, and to speak out for those whose stories are often unheard.
Where do you get your inspiration?
I draw inspiration from my experiences and the environment around me, creating works that reflect the emotions and stories that shape my world.
Who are your influences?
Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Christian Boltanski
What determines the subject matter you choose?
Mainly my work concerns the recognition of the violence inherent in monotheistic religions against women but also their struggle against their obedience and manipulation in a vicious form of exercised patriarchal power through religion.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I guess it is an attempt to open a road in order to give the opportunity for people to think, questioning and observing each other.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
I never get bored with conceptual art that challenges the boundaries between photography, typography, and storytelling. It always offers new ways to think and interpret the world.
Is there anything you want to add?
Thank you very much for this opportunity :)

Miasma
Project statement

In the work entitled Miasma I use different media such as photos, videos and installation. The word miasma is often used in monotheistic religions and implies that the body and especially the female body and bodily secretions are miasma and abomination.
Mainly my work concerns the recognition of the violence inherent in monotheistic religions against women but also their struggle against their obedience and manipulation in a vicious form of exercised patriarchal power through religion.
Growing up in a Protestant environment and having studied the Bible as a child, I was constantly seeing new interpretations and approaches to biblical texts that caused hatred against homosexuals, minorities, and especially women. The ‘principle of uniqueness’ (one land, one people, one nation, one god) becomes a requirement for an exclusive alliance that leads to the violence of exclusion.

Through my personal experience I invent rituals for deconstructing religious symbols such as blood, bread, fish, with the goal of catharsis and a transition to another state where the silent and oppressed female body/book is transformed into a body empowered by resistance, is created, constructed and reconstructed constantly.

aimilia balaska
@aimilia_balaska