Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome back visual artist Ildiko Nova of Winnipeg with two playful digital pieces that celebrate the audacity of being who you are, especially when that means refusing the narrow expectations society sets for us.
Rebellious Horse drops us into the world of chess, the black pieces lined in disciplined formation. Light glints off the lacquered set, inviting us to touch, to play, to imagine strategy. But one Knight refuses anonymity: he is scarlet, ringed with a halo that suggests both sanctity and heat. He draws the eye immediately — and yet, as long as he moves like a Knight, does his color matter? Redbecomes the emblem of everything society dismisses as “too much,” “too individual,” or “too different,” revealing how beauty expands when we allow ourselves to see beyond convention.
Ballerina uses red in a similarly subversive way, but here the clues are unmistakable. Four dancers move in linked formation, unified in gesture and step. One of them is red‑haired, wearing red tennis shoes and stands out with comic charm. We laugh, and then the question lands: why does form matter so much that it excludes people whose bodies, health, or ways of moving fall outside a rigid ideal? What if we let them dance too, with whatever adaptations they need? Too many people turn away from the stage because they cannot see themselves there, or worse, because someone told them they didn’t belong.
View Ildiko’s warm-hearted and whimsical artwork in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Ildiko Nova is a local artist in Winnipeg, Canada. Her artistic background includes various mediums and experiences from painting to digital design. She loves to paint portraits, city scenes and animals. Her illustration work is about storytelling and juxtaposition; she enjoys putting elements together that are unusual or unexpected. She asks questions about the growing urban setting and its effects on wildlife. She also likes to experiment with different materials, re-purpose and reclaim recycled objects. As a community worker and activist, she likes to reflect on the lives of underprivileged people and to address societal issues.