llaria Turba is a visual artist working mainly with photography, video and animation to create artworks, installations, site specific projects and communication projects. Her works are the result of a personal experience that intertwines visual experimentation with other disciplines: social science, performative art, oral history and very often the result of a collaboration with other artists, artisans and professionals
JEST is her first photobook and has been released at the end of 2016 by the Berlin-based publisher Peperoni Books. In January 2018 the first solo exhibition of JEST will open at the Museum l’Atelier in Nantes (FR).
JEST originates from Ilaria Turba’s exploration of her own family photo archive: five generations of images dating from 1870 to today are the starting point for a visual search. Photography, manipulated or not, is intertwined with other disciplines like dance, sound and storytelling. The body of work and the exhibition, involving game and action, offers the viewer a new experience of perceiving and seeing.
JEST, which means prank, takes shape when, among the many photographs of the family archive, two emerge: the departure of Apollo 11 and a woman carrying a rifle. This combination, born from the case, creates a funny and significant short circuit. Turba takes this accidental invitation to the game, turning it into a pretext to cross the photographic material with a different look and reflect on the meaning of photography today.
Looking at the images of JEST is just like riding a roller coaster: as soon as you think you understand where the author wants to lead you, the direction suddenly changes. You just have to do two things: keep asking yourself if what we see is real, and never stop being surprised by the beauty and the magic of what surrounds us.