Art Show: Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva – Fragility ** 8 Jul – 23 Aug ** Fabrica, Brighton
A lot of my work involves using materials that might be thought of as disgusting, but my intention is to create something beautiful through transformation.
Fragility is a new site-specific work commissioned by Fabrica from Macedonian born and now Brighton resident, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva.
A series of delicate veils fill the central atrium of Fabrica’s building, a former church: rising from floor to ceiling, diffusing the light, obscuring the way forward. Two narrow passages, carefully pierced through the veined walls, invite us in. At the centre of the work one clear viewpoint toward the filtered light from the main window is revealed, an experience the artist compares to the flash of light reportedly observed when close to death.
Fragility, like much of the artist’s work over the past decade, re-appropriates animal viscera. In this instance caul fat, a membrane that holds the vital organs together, is transformed from a perishable waste product of the pork industry into a sublimely beautiful translucent material via a lengthy chemical process akin to embalming.
Beyond its sensory impact, much of the pleasure in the work lies in understanding its inherent contradictions: the disconnect between the initial state of the material and its aesthetically pleasing result; the artist’s need to witness decay and her effort to halt it, and her desire to bury the viewer in a corporeal labyrinth whilst all the time suggesting a dimension beyond the physical.
Further exhibition information: http://fabrica.org.uk/fragility-further-exhibition-information/
Artist bio and useful links: http://fabrica.org.uk/fragility-artist-bio-and-links/
Trailer: http://youtu.be/F43sqo_T8_w
Fragility – Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva
8 July – 23 August
Fabrica, Brighton
Opening times
Wednesday/Friday/Saturday, 12–5pm
Thursdays, 12–7pm
Sundays, 2-5pm
via Fragility – Fabrica.
Sussex ArtBeat 