Jana Frost’s set designs are “inspiration for fever dreams” made with an A3 printer

London-based, multidisciplinary artist Jana Frost is making “inspiration for fever dreams”. Merging fashion photography with collage-art sensibilities, Jana employs cut-out animations, large-scale installations and a directorial style that prioritises several elements coming together to build physical, dreamlike environments. In a nutshell, Jana takes the aesthetic of pop-up books and makes them life-sized, turning dream imagery into physical reality.

Sourcing public domain images from libraries and archives, Jana reworks materials then unifies them – and in the process, creates photographic works that play with time. “You can’t really tell when the work was made, and all the different elements start to melt into one another instead of standing out as separate pieces,” says Jana. Because Jana doesn’t have access to large-scale printing, she produces at home using a basic A3 printer, breaking artworks into hundreds of small pages then stitching them together in what becomes a creative meditation.

After collaging 400 pages per set, she encourages models to interact with artwork, including loose elements from the fragile, paper art works. “The final composition is very much shaped by how they move and respond in the moment. It’s not something you can fully plan, it’s more about reacting to the energy of the day,” says Jana.

Surrealism plays a big role in how Jana creates. Artists like Hilma af Klint, Dora Maar, Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington have been especially important to her practice, as well as the cinematic works of Georges Méliès, Karel Zeman and Andrei Tarkovsky, all creatives who worked on film in a time when theatre had recently dominated the world, lending “playful, handmade and slightly magical” qualities to visual culture. It’s evident in Jana’s work – the nautical and astrological are caught in stark, early film stock monochromes, referencing classic myths as well as challenging a modern myth: you don’t need professional equipment to create something amazing.