Ilka Bauer

Ilka is a German-Canadian artist based in Victoria. After taking drawing lessons as a teenager, she spent 20 years studying, researching, and teaching biology. This took her from Germany to England, Wales, and ultimately to Canada where she spent years exploring boreal wetlands. Ilka has taught biology and botany, and, more recently, studied environmental policy and law before she turned her focus to artistic practice.

Today, Ilka creates in both two- and three-dimensional media and questions about the environment, reality, governance, and identity are prevalent in her work. Ilka enjoys the freedom she has as an artist to work across boundaries, and to develop her own visual language to explore complex issues.

Ilka is a member of Gage Gallery Arts Collective, the International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists, and an Associate member of the Federation of Canadian Artists. She has shown her work in Canada, the US, Germany, and Dubai, and is working to extend her reach internationally.