While the range of themes of “Female Lenses for Art Activism” reaches far and wide, the artists intersect in their multi-layered and multi-faceted artistic practice. The artists on show deal with pressing issues and offer a female lens with which to view these. Consciousness, ancestry, sustainability, mental health, technology, and energies are some of the topics the artists tackle. But while their topics hardly intersect, their savvy artistic skill does. All these women show their work in unique multi-disciplinary ways that combine and remix forms to create work that demands to be seen. The urgency of their work urges us to see these artists as activists, for they are both pushing forth their female lenses with pride while also tackling pressing issues we must acknowledge and observe in our contemporary society.
Artists: Delphine Diallo, Andrea Tyrimos, Lauren Baker, Claire Luxton, Elisa Insua, Sian Fan, Sadie Clayton
Delphine Diallo
@delphinediallocombines artistry with activism, pushing the many possibilities of empowering women, youth, and cultural minorities through her photographs. She is working towards creating new dimensions and a place where consciousness and art are a universal language by connecting artists, sharing ideas and learning.
BIO
Delphine Diallo is a Brooklyn-based French and Senegalese visual artist and photographer.
She graduated from the Académie Charpentier School of Visual Art in Paris in 1999 before working in the music industry for seven years as a special effect motion artist, video editor and graphic designer. In 2008, she moved to New York to explore her own practice after giving up a cooperate Art Director role in Paris. Diallo was mentored by acclaimed photographer and artist of Peter Beard who was impressed by her creativity and spontaneity before offering her to collaborate for the Pirelli calendar photo shoot in Botswana. Inspired by new environments on this trip, she decided to return to her father’s home city of Saint-Louis in Senegal to start her own vision quest.
Sought to challenge the norms of our society, Diallo immerses herself in the realm of anthropology, mythology, religion, science and martial arts to release her mind. Her work takes her to far remote areas, as she insists on spending intimate time with her subjects to better able represent their most innate energy “I treat my process as if it were an adventure liberating a new protagonist” — Diallo’s powerful portraitures unmask and stir an uninhibited insight that allows her audience to see beyond the facade. “We are in constant search for wonder and growth. I see art as a vessel to express consciousness and access to diffuse wisdom, enlightenment, fear, beauty, ugliness, mystery, faith, strength, fearless, universal matter”.
Where ever she can, Diallo combines artistry with activism, pushing the many possibilities of empowering women, youth, and cultural minorities through visual provocation. Diallo uses analog and digital photography, collage and illustration, 3D printing and virtual reality technologies as she continues to explore new mediums. She is working towards creating new dimensions and a place where consciousness and art are a universal language by connecting artists, sharing ideas and learning.
“I believe all humans, regardless of racial and geographic differences, share the same collective pool of instincts and images, though these manifest differently due to the moulding influence of culture. The time has come to go beyond the individual mind and relate our common universal connection to each other. We must collaborate, support, inspire, teach and learn together.”
Andrea Tyrimos
@andrea_tyrimos creates paintings, installations and public art. Her Bipolar Picasso project is a series of immersive art installations, featuring intimate paintings and audio recordings of people who have experience with mental health issues. This body of work is fuelled by personal experience; in addition to working with adults in crisis, the artist has several people close to her with mental health issues, who feel they are unable to be open for fear of being judged by society.
BIO
Andrea Tyrimos creates paintings, installations and public art. Her Bipolar Picasso project is a series of immersive art installations, featuring intimate paintings and audio recordings of people who have experience with mental health issues. This body of work is fuelled by personal experience; in addition to working with adults in crisis, the artist has several people close to her with mental health issues, who feel they are unable to be open for fear of being judged by society.
Andrea pushes the boundaries of portraiture, uniquely combining both visual and audio elements, in an attempt to give this invisible illness not only visibility but also presence. The visitor is confronted with intimate, illuminated oil paintings of both celebrities and members of the public. Alongside each portrait sits an accompanying audio piece, revealing the spoken words and innermost thoughts of the sitter. The visitor becomes fully immersed in a sensory exploration of the mind.
This work has received critical acclaim, resulting in the artist being featured in publications such as The Guardian, Evening Standard and Ability Magazine. Andrea has also been interviewed live on BBC World News, alongside her installations, and was recently filmed for Channel 4 documentary Flawless.
“Rendered in washed-out colours, minimalist detail to hair and clothing bringing out their vulnerability through their eyes. I’ve always felt that mental illness is something you wear on your face. Tyrimos has captured that” – The Guardian.
Lauren Baker
@laurenbakerart work explores the fragility of life, energy-fields, the after-life and other dimensions. Using neon light to express universal energies and life mantras, she aims to raise the vibration of love and connection within the world. Recent works visually interpret unseen energy. Lauren listens to sound frequencies and gets in a meditative state to digitally paint auras and energy, she then incorporates diamond dust, neon and kinetic elements to create celestial artworks.
BIO
Lauren Baker, born 1982, from Middlesbrough, UK. Currently lives and works in London.
Lauren Baker is a British contemporary multidisciplinary artist who exhibits internationally. Her work explores the fragility of life, energy-fields, the after-life and other dimensions. Using neon light to express universal energies and life mantras, she aims to raise the vibration of love and connection within the world.
Recent works visually interpret unseen energy. Lauren listens to sound frequencies and gets in a meditative state to digitally paint auras and energy, she then incorporates diamond dust, neon and kinetic elements to create celestial artworks. Her most recent collection ‘The Immensity of The Universe’ was firstly released in Saatchi Gallery on Sept 2018 which consists of a sensory experience that explores the origins of the universe and the intriguing beauty born from destruction and chaos.
She has created installations at The V&A, Tate Britain and Tate Modern and her work is held in collections worldwide.
Her limited edition ‘You blow my mind’ screenprints sold out in just 24 hours. Passionate about animals and conservation, Lauren is an ambassador for Save Wild Tigers. Her artwork has raised £67,000 for charity.
The Crystal Tigress; a sculpted life-size tiger head encrusted with 52,000 crystals, which toured Asia, and was endorsed by Jimmy Choo and Jaime Winstone, fetched £30,000 at the tiger conservation charity auction for Save Wild Tigers.
Baker’s most intricate work, which sold for £420,000 to an influential sheikh in Qatar, is a Steinway grand piano encrusted with half a million crystals (Feb 15).
In 2012 her art career started with a life-changing trip to South America. Lauren joined a mosaic street-art project in Brazil and took part in ceremonies with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon jungle surrounded by dense vegetation and wildlife. She then researched the best place to study mosaic in the world and developed her skills in Venice (Orsoni, 2012).
Claire Luxton
@claireluxtonstudio is a multidisciplinary artist. The ominous undercurrents of her work oscillate between constructed femininity and alluring vulnerability, seducing the viewer with intrigue and uncertainty. Claire’s work draws on both the modern anxiety of society and the environment; each portrait, painting and accompanying poetry, becoming an exploration of isolation, desire and uncertainty.
BIO
Claire Luxton is a UK-based multidisciplinary artist working with photography, painting, poetry and installation. After receiving a BFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, Claire created a challenging series of self-portraits, pushing her emotional and physical boundaries by becoming both the subject matter and the materiality.
The ominous undercurrents of her work oscillate between constructed femininity and alluring vulnerability, seducing the viewer with intrigue and uncertainty. Claire’s work draws on both the modern anxiety of society and the environment; each portrait, painting and accompanying poetry, becoming an exploration of isolation, desire and uncertainty.
Claire is drawn to the concept of truth and how people weave beautiful lies around their lives. She constantly seeks to tap into the parts of herself and others that nobody sees; to unhinge that part of our awareness that keeps it ‘all together’, that serenity we seek to display to the world, covering our dark fragility and desires.
In 2015, Claire Luxton’s exploration of human fragility, physicality and the female form culminated in her first solo exhibition, Avalon. This was followed by a second solo show, Botanica, in 2017. The artist’s work has been shown in London, Miami and Singapore, including at The London Art Fair and Art Basel.
Claire has collaborated with various brands, from Adobe to McQueens, and created bespoke artworks for clients such as The Birmingham Royal Ballet and JP Morgan. Luxton’s work has also been featured in both Glamour Italia and Germany, as well as on the cover of Blogosphere Magazine.
Her new work feels like a tide of change to the artist, a building conversation between a forgotten part of herself and the perpetual rhythm and anxiety within today’s society. She seeks to examine the anticipation of perfection and the heightened nervousness of self; in-built loneliness from constantly seeking, looking, wanting, needing.
Sian Fan
@sianfan explores the relationship between the physical and the virtual through animation, 3D scanning & printing, and virtual & augmented reality, employing these technologies in conjunction with the body to address the disembodied experience of being online. Sian Fan designed a virtual space and visual escape using game design software that you can download on your desktop for a virtual downtime.⠀
BIO
Sian Fan is a mixed media artist working in London.
She has exhibited internationally with venues including Tate Modern, British Council, and the ICA, as well as producing work with Channel 4, the BBC and Google.
Her work combines movement, the female body and technology to explore disembodiment and human experience in the digital age. Drawing on her background in contemporary and aerial dance she suspends, fragments and augments the body via choreography and digital techniques, as a method of exposing the underlying effects of technology.
She explores the relationship between the physical and the virtual through animation, 3D scanning & printing, and virtual & augmented reality, employing these technologies in conjunction with the body to address the disembodied experience of being online. Whilst being passionate about the capabilities of technology she is also wary of how it alters our experience of being human. She is interested in exploring and exposing the experience of engaging with technology, in how it draws us out of our bodily experience and into virtual experiences. She is fascinated by virtual identities, and in how we construct virtual bodies which exist in hyperspace beyond our physical bodies.
She is passionate about being a female and person of colour working directly with technology, which she feels are currently underrepresented. From her experiences working within technological industries, she has felt a noticeable absence of female representation and is keen to promote and champion the capabilities of females working with technology.
She is interested in the experience of being human in our increasingly digitised and hyperconnected world and seeks to discover new ways for us to coexist with technology.
Sadie Clayton
@iamsadieclayton grew up in West Yorkshire, and she is a Jamaican British fusion. In this environment, Sadie had to learn how to be comfortable with not fitting into usual cultural norms, pushing the boundaries of the different cultures that she was embedded in. Her creativity and artistry thrived through the realisation that sense of community is not given by the ability to fit into a ready-made box, but it stems from the coming together of like-minded souls that, through a spirit of collaboration and sharing, can achieve more inspiring and unexpected results.
BIO
Sadie grew up in West Yorkshire, and she is a Jamaican British fusion. In this environment, Sadie had to learn how to be comfortable with not fitting into usual cultural norms, pushing the boundaries of the different cultures that she was embedded in. Her creativity and artistry thrived through the realisation that sense of community is not given by the ability to fit into a ready-made box, but it stems from the coming together of like-minded souls that, through a spirit of collaboration and sharing, can achieve more inspiring and unexpected results. Sadie believes that in a world where individualism is increasingly growing and the drive for immediacy and mental exhaustion are becoming the norm, the higher force of communal creativity is a powerful tool to create a safe environment. In this surrounding, the cultural diversities and talents brought by each individual collide and result in an explosion of greater artistry, which has its root in a strong sense of community.
Sadie herself represents the amalgamation of different cultures, and this is reflected through her practice, by her desire to explore multiple disciplines, resulting in her constant need of innovation and determination to blur the thresholds between different artistic fields.
Sadie’s creative journey starts at Kingston University in 2013 with a BA Honors Fashion Design. Fascinated by design and innovation, Sadie took these foundations to explore the creative boundaries between art, technology and fashion presenting her Spring /Summer 2017 collection at the Royal Academy of the Arts in holographic form in collaboration with MHD holograms; creating bespoke content with Adobe films for their Visionnaires story, and FisForFendi; and presenting her working process with copper through Augmented Reality for her Spring/Summer 2018 collection.
Sadie is well known for her signature copper sculptures. This material is characterised by its malleability, multifaceted beauty, and healing and spiritual properties: its history in the field of medicine and significance as the conductor of information, speed and overall positive energy led Sadie to become passionate about it and to choose it as her primary medium of expression.
Nowadays, she has over 10 years of experience working with copper. Sadie has showcased and demonstrated the art of working with this metal as a part of the Nick Waplington / Alexander McQueen: Working Process exhibition at the Tate Britain, and she leads several workshops at the Tate Modern most recently as part of Late at the Tate and at the Ace Hotel as part of London Cra> Week 2019. Sadie started to take her creativity away from the confines of the body and released herself as a creator and innovator debuting her copper wearable art at Art Basel Miami at the Red Dot Gallery, and later at the Museum of Art and Design as part of Singapore Design Week.
In 2018 in Shangai, Sadie took these demonstrations of her artistic process to another level: she broke any boundaries between art and technology through her second collaboration – following the success of COGX in London in the same year – with Sophia, the first ever social, humanoid robot, programmed through AI and created by Hanson RoboKcs. Sadie and Sophia continued their exploration together of Sadie’s creative process, and the artist’s journey to harness Art, Design and Technology became a reality during the event at Shanghai fashion weekend, as Sadie designed bespoke, copper and 3D printed arm cuffs for Sophia. This on-going conversation resulted in the presentation of Sadie’s latest work in New York in April 2019 as part of the Designing Our Future exhibition, in which she broke down the mental barriers between human and humanoid.
In October 2019, Sadie became the first artist to create works of art together with the first Artist robot, Ai- Da. The event was held at the Tate Modern as part of the Tate Exchange program, and the aim was to explore the theme of the technology as the extension of a human being and how its transformative power can influence society, specifically in terms of facilitating or exacerbating existing racial dynamics. As part of this creative exchange between Human Artist and Robot Artist, Sadie took inspiration from Andy Warhol’s video portraits to explore the limits of a humans’ virtual self, and she created short workshops where she dynamically responded to Ai-Da’s drawings. Sadie created moodboards that served to develop a small scale prototype of the Copper Sanctuary, a place in which we can meditate and heal our mind. In light of the theme, and the pandemic issue of mental health, Sadie wanted to reinforce the concept that technology, combined with artistry, can be used as a positive tool to improve our overall state of mind.
The art world has fully acknowledge Sadie as a unique creator and innovator within the UK art scene. She was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 4 on their Only Artists program with the renowned industrial designer, artist and architect Ron Arad, and they discussed her perspective on what it means to represent an ar9s9c fusion with no creative boundaries. She was invited to create a video by Art Fund for the current V&A museum exhibition of Frida Kahlo, a huge inspiration for Sadie’s work, and another iconic female artist. Sadie also curates the ING Discerning Eye exhibition in November 2018 and created the 2018 copper Christmas tree for The Ivy Granary Brasserie, drawing a significant national and international acclaim.
Elisa Insua
Elisa Insua was born in Buenos Aires in 1990. In 2011 she completed her degree in Economics and Business at Torcuato Di Tella University.
At the age of sixteen, she started her practice as a self-taught artist, creating assemblages and sculptures with discarded materials. She gradually fused her artistic practice with concepts related to economics, overconsumption and human insatiability. In the following years, she studied sculpture with Miguel Harte and was part of group critiques with Fabiana Barreda, Diego Bianchi and Ernesto Ballesteros.
In 2014, she had her first solo show, “Stairway to Heaven” at Plataforma (Córdoba, Argentina), followed by “More is More” at Espacio Modos (Buenos Aires, 2016) and “Quid Pro Quo” at APPA (Madrid, 2018). In 2019 she had her largest show to date, “Virtual Vanitas” at Usina del Arte (Buenos Aires, Argentina).
She was part of various group shows in South America and Europe, including “Ludica” at MACSur (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del Sur, Buenos Aires, 2018), “Memento Mons” at Beaux Arts Mons Museum (Mons, Belgium, 2019), “Slight Omission” at Cerquone Projects (Madrid, 2018) and “Proyecto Vergel” at María Casado HG (Buenos Aires, 2016). After two years based in Madrid, in 2019 she returned to Buenos Aires, where she currently lives and works.
Economic studies are based on a series of basic principles: one of them states that, for any given individual, “the more, the better”. My work tries to push this axiom to the limit of excess and abundance, in order to tense it, question it or even defy it.
My pieces are about desire, opulence, ostentation and luxury. I apply the concept of the “hedonic treadmill” (the tendency of humans to return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite increases in wealth or the achievement of major goals) and the straight-forward myth of King Midas and his Golden Touch. Social ascent, the “American Dream”, economic inequality, endless irresponsible consumption and the effects of capitalism are also recurring themes.
Although I usually draw many elements from pop culture, I’m especially inspired by the rap and hip hop universe – with its explicit lyrics and its unapologetic loads of “bling”. Gold (as an element and as a color) is also a persisting component of my work, both in relation to the sacred and the profane. In my pieces, these two are united, confronted and intertwined. The profane is sacralized and the sacred is profaned. Enrichment and accumulation appear as religious dogmas, while gods are reduced to mere commodities. Ambition appears both as a vital drive and as a fatal sin.
Ultimately, through my pieces I seek to shed light on how money, as an abstract and powerful force, constantly and silently affects our behavior, as if it were the force of gravity.