Irena Jurek

Since the fantastical is born out of the realistic, I make no distinction between fantasy and reality. The wolves, cats, bunnies, teddy bears, pigs, frogs, clowns, mermaids, and trolls that occupy my world, are earthly, corporeal creatures that are immediately familiar and recognizable. Riffing off of the language of fairy tales, cartoons, and cliché, I create scenarios in which few things are actually as they appear to be. In both life and art, what often seems at first to be the epitome of the lecherous wolf, full of posturing machismo, on closer inspection turns out instead to be a docile, sensitive, and submissive creature. At other times, the wolf is exactly as he appears, a virile, dominant alpha, who embodies the role he was cast to play.

It’s this contrast between our personas and the societal masks we all wear, and the more sincere “face” of our instincts and desires that fascinates me. The character of the cat woman is an embodiment of a female being that embraces her sexual drives, and needs fully. She is an independent, feral, and unpredictable creature who lives by her own set of rules. Relishing in the power of her sexual agency, the cat woman does as she pleases, with whomever she pleases, whenever she pleases. As a predatory animal, she represents a capricious, violent, and untamable form of sexuality.

The dynamics of predator and prey come into play in the form of dominance and submission in many of the stories I tell. At times the pig giddily anticipates being devoured by the hungry wolf, while in a different scene, the wolf himself becomes prey. The pig that I occasionally portray as the victimized, scapegoat, herself becomes the bully and the torturer when the script is flipped, and she is placed in the position of power. Both in our fantasies and our realities, we are never actually completely aware of who we are until opportunity and circumstance present themselves to us and reveal latent aspects of our appetites and inclinations that would otherwise remain hidden.

- Irena Jurek 2016