Biography \\ Ilse Frech
Visual artist, filmmaker and documentary photographer Ilse Frech (1972, Amsterdam) is of Dutch-Macedonian descent. She studied Photography (1990-94) at the Royal Academy of Art – KABK, The Hague. She obtained a Master of Arts HES-SO – Major Work.Master, in Fine Arts and Contemporary Artistic Practices at HEAD – Genève, Swiss University of Art and Design (2011-13) – both an academic as well as a cultural institution.
Ilse Frech has been working internationally since 1995, when in 2000 her professional career as a documentary photographer and filmmaker debuted with a documentary project Children of the Balkans, comprised of two series: Muslim refugees in post-war Bosnia, and Roman children in Sutka, Skopje (North Macedonia), exhibited at Naarden Photofestival (2001). Two years later Frech was selected to take part in Joop Swart Masterclass 2003 by World Press Photo, resulting in an essayistic documentary series Private Life, portraying Muslim youth – up-close, in Paris’ banlieues combining photography with interviews (French), as well samples of music (hip-hop). The series was nominated for the 2003 ICP Infinity Award for Documentary and Photojournalism.
2005 Onwards Frech pursued working with young Muslim women in Paris’ banlieues, in what became an in-depth four-year collaborative multimedia– and documentary project, resulting in a solo-exhibition at the Institut Néerlandais (Paris), during Mois de la Photo 2008. The exhibition presented her first monograph I Am – Paradox Identity and the premiere of a first mid-feature documentary film I Am. My Islam. My France. Logline: A colorful filmmosaic of five young Muslim women, offering an intimate glance through the façade of suburban concrete. The film was selected for IWAB South-Korea, Incheon Women Artists’ Biennal 2009. The project consists of an extended photography archive, a documentary film, interviews (French), audio-recordings (reportage), and an image-collection of entire photo-albums – selfies, taken with mobile phones at the time (2005-08), as social media were then non-existent.
Whilst living and working in Paris, Frech produced the documentary project Nika, Russia LOVE (2005-07): a poetic portrait in stills, a short film – documentary (video), poetry, through lyrics (audiorecordings, songs, spoken word), and a collection of interviews (French, English, Russian). The outcome of which is a unique and intimate document, of young Russian adults living at the margins of Russian society within the seropositiv – HIV+ community, and the downside of addictive behaviour, while personalities unfold their unequivocal petals, as if they were beautiful yet fragile flowers.
In 2010, upon invitation by The Rijksmuseum and NRC Handelsblad, Frech was commissioned for the 2010 edition of Document Nederland, resulting in Zjeitu of which a selection of photographs are part of the Rijksmuseum’s Photography Collection. Zjeitu, a sultry portrait of the Dutch Antilles, was exhibited at De Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2010-11) due to The Rijksmuseum’s renovation at the time. The project consists of an archive in photography, interviews with residents of Curaçao and Bonaire, a ten-fold podcast created in collaboration, video’s and an especially designed interactive website (no longer online). With its annual commission the Rijksmuseum intends to highlight subjects of relevance to contemporary Dutch society with the aim of documenting history as it unfolds.
Exile: Belonging (1995-2018): An interdisciplinary art research project, functioning as a creative space where identity relates to political heritage in connotation with the imprint of war, exile, displacement and body memory in connotation with trauma. Associated with mythology, legend and body memory, the project’s output exists of documentary-based works, comprising re-enactment, choreography, live-performances, verbatim either autofiction translated into audiovisual-installations, video works, photography, poetry and scenario writing. In 2025 another chapter is being added to this project, expecting to be continued in 2026, to then come full circle and transposing the project altogether into a publication.
Sweet Terror of Memory – ΨΙΘΥΡΟΙ (2018, 15′) is a short film and experimental film-poem. Logline: Three women embark on a journey of perpetual memory, uprooted and torn away from each other and their motherland, the film is set in a dreamlike landscape of ruins and legend. A sensorial manifest of spiritual absolution – whispering, exalts towards a regard liberated upon ourselves: Mankind’s history.
Sweet Terror of Memory – ψίθυροι premiered at the 2018 edition of the Nederlands Film Festival in Utrecht. Nominated for best international short film at KineNova 2018, Film festival Skopje in North-Macedonia. As well selected by Festival Cannes 2018 for its Short Film Corner, and in 2019 by Visions du Réel Festival International de cinéma, for the Media Library (Nyon, Switzerland).
Filmed in Greek Macedonia (German/Agios Germanos), North-Macedonia and Germany (Berlin), the film’s narration is a fusion of autofiction, esoteric practice, Greek legend, poetry and verbatim derived from interviews with personal stories of female war heroins of the Greek Civil War entwined with WWII. The layered storytelling is echoed by the images filmed and performed, reflecting the voices of those who took part in the Resistance hence women who perished either exiled from Macedonia – the Northern province of Greece, as well as of Holocaust survivors – women who’ve witnessed specific events that took place during both wars, altogether voicing harrowing stories. Poems for A Scenario is an assemblage of 27 poems written by Frech, hence the fundament for both the film’s script and its editing.
2016, Whilst the war raged in Syria, Ilse Frech stayed three months as artist-in-residence at Ashkal Alwan, Beyrouth – The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, in affiliation with the Mondriaan Fund (NL). Frech researched Lebanese war trauma and its multiple carriers of memory, resulting in a twofold outcome: Fugacious Presence, a collaborative improvisational performance and an audiovisual installation presented at Ashkal Alwan (27/05/16), a first spatial research study for film, titled A Letter to Eternity, initially assocated with the Phoenicians’ historic maritime route, a seafaring civilisation spread across Mediterranean Sea.
Since its inception, “One”, A Letter to Eternity has evolved into an interdisciplinary umbrella project, conceived as a filmic trilogy, combining elements of speculative–and science fiction, based on past– and recent study and interdisciplinary research, influenced by the Hermetic ‘as above, so below’, an entangling ‘Odyssean’ gaze creates yet another tale of the ‘condition humaine’, unfolding into a choreographed collective procession of people and their rituals, crossing dimensions of time through the lens of the camera, and that of shamanism. Elements of Indigenous – Andean, cosmology as well as Egyptian creation myth, Hellenistic influences from Antiquity to Classicism, archaeoastronomy, astrobiology, and Western Esotericism have shaped its concept over the years.
July 2023 Frech partook in a 3-week Summer Programme at the University of Amsterdam – Graduate School of Social Sciences, “Arcane Worlds: New Frontiers in the Study of Esotericism”, offered in cooperation with the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, the world’s leading institute for academic research and teaching in the field of (western) esotericism, located at the University of Amsterdam.
In October/November 2023 Frech participated in an international artist-led residency La Wayaka Current, research- and expedition programme situated in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, forging to connect artists with biodiversity in experiential ways, shamanism, as well specifically addressing the Andean cosmology of the Altiplano, a culture that has developed over the last 15,000 years, with which bringing forth awareness to complexities and problematics concerning the driest region on earth, addressing the context of colonisation, as well entailing discussions in regards to consciousness and current climate change.