Lera Kelemen (b.1994) is a multimedia artist working in London, UK. Her installation practice reflects on notions of femininity, confinement, body structure, vulnerability and equilibrium. Analysing the limitations of bodies in space, she uses her own corporeality to model and enliven matter. Her works result in conceptually immersive settings where shapes, surfaces and armatures blend together to define new entities. In the past two years, she developed a new body of work inspired by anatomy, encasings and their extension into physical space.
She studied at the Royal College of Art and was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize in 2022. Selected residencies and exhibitions include Corporeus, Thirsty solo show at Feelium Gallery (UK, 2024); Green Skin / Crevice solo show at Borderline Art Space (RO, 2021); I feel something, don’t know what group show at Zacheta National Gallery (PL, 2021); Green Skin / Affective Interstice at Art Encounters (RO, 2021); Niki Artist-Run Residency (DE, 2020); Staycation group show at Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery (RO, 2022); If Anything Else Survives at Potential Project (GR, 2021); Royal College of Art shows (UK, 2020-2022).
Kelemen’s Backslit, 2024, represents the production process involving applying body pressure to a soft material and letting it settle at its own pace. Air, temperature and temporality determine shape. On the brink of an existential crisis, the bodies feel the constraints of the environment and internalise it, tackling emotion & reason, impulse and control. There is no back story, just a state of frenzy. Movement is anchored inside a small frame where aggregation is ambiguous. As it merges with the frame, the body becomes a vessel for its own crisis, an a priori condition triggered by self-doubt. In Backslit, two backbones attach to each other like two halves of a prosthetic corset curving against the spine. The claws clench as tension circulates through the lumps. Will it ever let go? Underlining an inherent feeling of losing balance, the sculpture borders uncertainty and paralysis. The lack of life hints at a broken morphological sequence, organic or otherwise. Delicately bound by straps and buckles, these bodies hang in a suspended state, longing for connection and warmth. The installation room becomes an uncanny capsule where materiality conjures meaning.