Kamilia Kard is an Hungarian / Italian artist born in Milan, Italy. She holds a MA Degree in Political Economy (CLEP) from the Bocconi University, Milan (2003), a BA Degree in Painting (2012), and a MA Degree in Net Art (2014), both from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan.
Since 2006, she exhibited at various venues in Italy and worldwide. Highlights include: AIL – A hand for the golden mean, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, 2011; Pictures at an Exhibition, Broletto contemporary art space, Pavia 2012; Videoart Yearbook, Museo del ‘900, Milan, 2013; THE WRONG – NEW DIGITAL ART BIENNIALE, 2013 – 2014, online; Pulvis ES, Isimbardi Palace, Milan (Italy), 2014; META, Quartel Galeria Municipal de Arte, Abrantes (Portugal), 2014; Spamm Webtics, Wendy Subway, Brooklyn, NY, 2014; In pulverem Reverterum, Studio Museum Messina, Milan 2014; Nadja, Hypersalon, Miami, 2014; Mulhouse Biennale, Mulhouse (FR) 2015; Melons screwdrivers and other short tales, WeMake, Milan 2015; Browsing Browsing, Galerie Charlot, Paris 2015.
She also curated various projects, including: Internal / External – Sensitive Atmospheres, Fuorisalone, Milan, 2012; Bestwallcover, online, 2012 ongoing; Dashboard, Frigoriferi Milanesi, Milan, 2014; Internet Drones, ULTRA / e-flux, Udine (I), 2015; and she is currently co-curating a pavilion for the THE WRONG BIENNALE 2015 (upcoming).
Kamilia Kard’s work focuses on the construction of identity in the internet age, and is manifested through different media, from painting to video and animated gif, prints and installation. The online projects reflect on how to build an image, a narrative and an identity that interfaces and communicates in a virtual and real space. The semiotics and phenomenology created around these works are an expression of a contemporary identity in which the narrative is mediated daily and routinely by different interfaces.
Her involvement with the field of net art started back in 2012, with the online, collaborative project Bestwallcover (2012 – ongoing): an attempt to explore how people portray themselves publicly online, within the simple set of options offered by Facebook’s standard layout. The simple combination of the Profile Image with the Wall Cover is subject to endless experimentation, producing a stream of ephemeral self portraits, between transparence and opacity, self representation and identity construction. The project was very successful, welcoming hundreds of contributions from all over the world.
Around the same time, for the online collaborative platforms After Prince and After Cariou (2012 – 2014), that she helped designing and setting up, she started exploring the postproduction of found online content and the potential of the animated gif, that became one of her favorite media. Grounded on a profound knowledge of the tradition, and the medium, of painting, her image-based work – both static and animated – often finds its point of departure either in well known masterpieces of the past – from Hieronymus Bosch to Sandro Botticelli – or in the forgotten work of obscure Russian or Eastern European Nineteenth Century painters, from Surikov Streltsi to Viktor Vasnetsov. This elements are combined with handmade drawings by herself, found animated gifs, glitter effects, 3D manipulation effects, and animations and then translated into prints, installations, videos or digital images freely distributed online. Aesthetically refined as well as conceptually poignant, this body of work introduces the viewer in a system in which the criticism of mass culture and its imagery goes hand in hand with the development of an intimate, personal world made of the same stuff dreams are made of.