Ivana Byak

Ivana Byak's practice explores the tension between curated façades and fractured realities within contemporary image culture. Working across oil painting, laser etching, and digital manipulation, she subverts the polished aesthetics of social media to reveal the instability beneath. By reconfiguring familiar formats, such as Instagram's frames and feeds, her work exposes how constant self-surveillance erodes intimacy and amplifies comparison. Synthetic, machine-made surfaces collide with tactile, handmade layers, materialising the dissonance between performed perfection and human vulnerability. Through this interplay, the rapid consumption of images is forced to slow down, inviting viewers to linger, question, and rediscover authentic connection beyond the screen.