Ilanit Illouz lives and works in Paris. Since earning her degree in Artistic Research in 2005 from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris-Cergy, her work has been situated at the intersection of photography and visual art practices.

Deeply imbued with a research-based approach, her photography series stack up within distinct bodies of work that have been built over the years. This is especially the case for Les Dolines (Sinkholes), a multifaceted project that she began in 2016 with the help of a grant from the Fondation des Artistes. 

Her work uses a visual and formal language open to interdisciplinary media. It focuses on areas in the Mediterranean region, which the artist explores with a sensual yet concrete approach that blends the subject with the final format of her pieces. Her projects also represent spaces to consider the social, geopolitical and economic history of the places she explores. 

Upon arriving in a place, Illouz repeatedly explores, enquires and observes; walking, taking photographs and collecting samples. She then develops photographic and mechanical reproduction processes that can be unusual at times, a series of temporal operations deeply connected to the materiality of the places she presents. In her studio, she showcases her spoils, photographing them and applying specific processes to her images. By printing on different papers and adding substances at print stage, she creates dialogues with the object that reveal as much as they erase. They put our memory to the test in the physical world, literally, through print.

Her new project, Sel noir (Black salt, working title), is an experimental photographic study of three Italian volcanoes. By treating certain natural materials as motifs or raw materials, she challenges the physical processes by which an image appears. 

Illouz has exhibited in many different places, namely the Parc-Culturel de Rentilly, the Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France (CPIF) and the Centre d’Art de la Ferme du Buisson. In 2019 she took part in the group exhibitions La Vérité n’est pas la Vérité ? (Truth isn't Truth) at Maison Bernard Anthonioz (MABA), Some of us, an overview on the French Art Scene at the Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf (Germany) and Lignes de vies – Une exposition de légendes (Lifelines – an Exhibition of Legends) at the MAC-VAL. In 2021, she set up her studio at the prestigious MABA.