Searching for Symptoms - Ella Belenky
Searching for Symptoms by Ella Belenky is an eclectic and overlapping mix of drawing, found imagery, metal cages, and the digital.
From 13 November 2021 to 03 December 2021
ACAVA Central Space
23-29 Faroe Road
W14 0EL
Curated by Carolina Lio
Assistant curator: Katerina Matheson
The exhibition comprises a selection of works revolving around a structure of gabions, usually filled with stones to create landscape decorations and barriers. Within the project, the gabions function both as walls and structural support, but also as a conceptual element connected to the experience of the pandemic. Not only has this experience changed our relationship with freedoms and limitations, but it has also radicalised our perception of space and architecture. There is a discovery of permeability between the inside and outside - walls as well as our bodies.
The drawings, paintings and prints in the project come from multiple research streams, connected mainly to three aspects of the pandemic:
Biological vulnerability
Psychological outcomes
The amplified relationship with technology
Ella has been taking inspiration and visual references and re-purposed some titles from a found old copy of the RHS Pests & Diseases book. She connected this source to articles and studies about how the subconscious reacts (in sleep) to the pandemic, making us dream about bugs and insects.
Lastly, she traces some language, conceptual and pragmatic links between the biological event and our dependency on technology. Starting from observing how many informatics names refer to nature (e.g. cloud, bug), she uses the internet, its icons and its tools to state the second nature correlation we have with them for communication, safety, and survival.
The project explores timely topics and their extreme relevance in a re-opening world in which the old routines and way of living will be re-thought and re-arranged.
Ella Belenky (b. 1991, US) is based in London since 2017, when she moved from New York after her BA in Fine Arts from Bard College. In London, she obtained an MA from the Royal College of Art and participated in projects hosted by Kingsgate Project Space and Lewisham Arthouse, among others. She is the recipient of the Augustus Martin Print Award (2019) and Elizabeth Murray and Sol Lewitt Award (2013). Her work is in the collections of a number of institutions including V&A, London; RCA, London; and Headlands Center For The Arts, California.
Download the press release here: