Ilme Simmul – Vogues

Woodcut
Edition of 55
Image size: 62 x 42.5 cm
Paper size: 77 x 50 cm
PCA Print Commission 1991

Ilme Simmul’s prints are predominantly allegorical, the object determining the narrative, the focus being her observation of urban life. Her expressionist oeuvre selects objects that surround her everyday existence, rendering them as details of human nature, more often a portrait of the materialistic hypocrisy seen within our society.
As is seen in the print Vogues, Simmul accentuates the pathos of the modern world by using the image of the nightclub or cafe society, not dissimilar to Georg Grosz’s post-war German social satire. Materialistic hedonism is juxtaposed against the image of the corpse of an innocent animal, a metaphor for the universal victims of cruelty and injustice and a reference to the broader malaise that appears within our social parameters.