In this paper we present IVEA, a personalized visual interface which enables users to explore text collections from different perspectives and levels of detail. This work explores the use of a personal ontology, which encapsulates users' entities of interest, as an anchor for the exploration process. This, in effect, simplifies the comprehension of visual representation of text collections by helping users to focus on aspects that they are particularly concerned with. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces.- Graphical user interfaces. General terms: Design