Ilse Dahms is a visual artist who has been living and working in Ireland since 1999. In South Africa she studied photography and dance and also worked in the theatre as a costume designer and stage manager. Having obtained a B.A. Visual Arts (Hons) degree from TU Dublin (B.A.V.A Sherkin) in 2020 and also having a degree in Social Work , she combines these two disciplines to pursue a hybrid and fascinating career where each informs the other in her work.
Ilse’s work addresses pertinent and topical political, environmental and social issues. She uses film, photography, installation, sound and drawing to make visible that which we find hard to confront, be it social issues of a more intimate nature such as domestic abuse or global issues where human interventions impact on the environment. What links these apparent disparate topics is the theme of a collective amnesia, a shared societal repression of the consequences of our actions or inactions. When impacted by a particular issue, she works in an organic way, letting the images that come to her naturally, lead the way in how she approaches and constructs the work. She often employs the technique of juxtaposing the beautiful with the terrible to highlight and investigate social and environmental issues.
Exhibitions, workshops and collaborations include:
A Toxic Beauty II, a site specific intervention and sound installation, Sherkin Island and Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre (2020); A Toxic Beauty I, video installation, TU Dublin (2019); Residue, socially engaged collaboration, on location Cork city and TU Dublin (2019); Sounding the Anthropocene, a collaborative sound art project for the Open Ear Music Festival, Sherkin Island (2019); Out of Sight, collaborative performance, IMMA, Dublin (2019); He loves me he loves me not, TU Dublin (2018); Cape Able Virtual Exhibition, Second Life (2017)
A Toxic Beauty II was long listed for the Royal Dublin Society Visual Art Awards in 2020.
Ilse’s work is in private collections in Ireland, Denmark, South Africa and The Netherlands.