Julia Hadji-Stylinou, is an artist that works with Photography and video, as well as fine art. She Studied at De Montfort University for her BA and graduated in 2012, which she then went on to study a MA at De Montfort university.
what she is currently doing
- Currently she work s as an image retoucher for NEXT, and is involved with fashion photography.
- Works at De Montfort university, in fashion
She is half British, half Greek – Her work focuses on “identity”, where she looks at what it means to be in-between two nationalities and the cultural differences involving them. As well as looking at self image, gender identity, sexual identity etc.
IDENTITY AND THE MIND
chasing dreams – looking at the mind and the unconscious. how the mind and the body can interact. She looks at how our every day lives influence our dreams, but also the feeling you have within dreams. She referred to the feeling as “broken dreams” , which she attempted to represent using photography, which she digitally modified to enhance this idea of “sense of self”. She talks about how you are in a “fragmented state” when you dream, that there is a lack of control that you have, where for the most part you have no idea what you will dream about or even if you remember it.
NON COMPOS MENTIS
She focused on the conscious mind – which is everything that we are aware of. Such as our thoughts and feelings. She went about taking her own self portraits, as at the time she was struggling with mental health issues. Julia wanted to use long exposure in her photographs, they were meant to communicate this feeling of unpredictability and doubt- saying “her mind would spiral”, and this was her way of showing this.
ARTISTS SHE WAS INFLUENCED BY
She was influenced by artist Cindy Sherman, and her concept of playing different personas and characters in her work. She then came across Francesca Woodman who is into the concept of human fragility, where she created a series of self-portraits, where she questioned her identity.
MY OPINION
I really like her use of photography to portray a state of mind, I really connect with her in regards to her mental health issues. I think it can sometimes be difficult to accurately represent how you are feeling within a photo, but the use of photo editing and experience with exposure, makes it feel exactly how it has being described. As my work is relating to phobias and the mental health that women face, It was nice to see another approach.