Irene Needoba
Irene Bollweg-Needoba was born in Bolivia to a Bolivian mother and a German father. She grew up in a deeply Catholic country torn with revolutions and dictatorships. Due to the dual ethnicities of her parents, she was starkly aware of the differences between the two cultures of her parents and grandparents.
At 25 years of age, she left Bolivia to live in Baghdad, Iraq during the regime of terror of Saddam Hussein and departing due to the war between Iran and Iraq, this had a tremendous impact on her life, where she was alone with two small children having to get out of the country, she felt the futility of war first-hand.
After Iraq, she lived in the United Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Egypt and Scotland. During her time overseas she had the opportunity to visit many countries around the world.
Through this process she found herself feeling like an outsider, dealing with foreign cultural conventions, the obsessions and behaviors of different traditions and the consequences of nationalism.
Since then, she found it liberating to step out of old surroundings and embrace new cultures.
Her idea and philosophy are not to represent the ideology and perfection of any culture in particular, but the chaos of embracing the human race as a whole.
Her sources for making art are situations in life she had experienced. She likes the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi; life is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete, like the universe itself is incomplete and in constant state of becoming dissolve she finds a relief in acceptance imperfection.
Every piece of work is like her life with all its problems, frustrations, and happiness. Through the paintings, she wants to experience a new freedom, the sense of acceptance, not belonging anywhere and yet to belong and represent all of us humans, exceeding all cultural definitions.
She embraces the idea of "no traditions. no patriotism, no culture" but the experiences of all cultures, and to rebel against any idea of the "perfect" culture.